


Trades Happen

by fmt



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Coming Out, Fluff and Angst, Hockey, Homophobia, I just love Kent Parson ok and want him to be happy, M/M, Multi, Slow Burn, Therapy, briefest mention of Jack's od
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:27:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 49,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24380527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fmt/pseuds/fmt
Summary: Kent gets traded to the Falconers. He plays hockey, and along the way reconnects with old friends, makes some new ones, discovers a nefarious plot, and goes to therapy.
Relationships: Eric "Bitty" Bittle/Kent "Parse" Parson/Jack Zimmermann
Comments: 100
Kudos: 131





	1. Surrender

**Author's Note:**

> And so it begins...

Kent is about to start lacing up his skates, ready to go out on ice, about to absolutely crush the shit out of the Schooners when the Aces GM taps him on the shoulder and jerks his head towards the door of the locker room. 

Kent follows. A couple of the Aces shoot questioning glances at him - the game is about to begin, Coach looks like he’s gearing up for a locker room speech, it doesn’t quite seem like the time for the friendly check-ins Chris is famous for, but whatever. Kent just shrugs, one-shouldered, claps a hand on Swoops’ back when the guy looks like he’s going to open his mouth, and keeps his head down as they move down player’s hallway, to the first in a line of several conference rooms. 

The thing is, Kent is playing really well this season. Like, really, really well. He knows the Cup is a team effort, and all, but if Kent kept playing like this for the rest of their games and the rest of the team tanked, absolutely bombed, he thinks they would still have a pretty solid chance at making playoffs. 

So when Chris tells him that he’s being traded, effective immediately, that he won’t be playing in tonight’s game, and that he has approximately one hour to clean his shit out and get to the airport, Kent opens his mouth, to protest, to say that’s crazy, to curse, to something. But nothing comes out. 

Because the thing is, the rest of the team isn’t bombing. They’re playing pretty well, and Kent is playing especially well, and actually as a matter of fact, the Aces are at the top of division rankings, and Kent is happy here, or something at least approximating happiness. 

Kent clears his throat. He has to say something, he can tell that Chris is waiting for a response, so that he can respond based on Kent’s reaction. 

Willing his voice to stay steady, please, Kent asks —

“What’s my new team?”

He thinks he managed to pull it off, but Chris just keeps looking at him, a carefully blank expression on his face. 

“We appreciate your years with the team Kent. We wish you all the best in the rest of your season with the Falconers”. 

What. The. Fuck. 

*** 

So yeah, it’s safe to say he wasn’t expecting this. 

There are a bunch of other guys in the room that Kent didn’t pay attention to until now.  
He recognizes the owner of the Aces in one corner of the room, talking rapidly on a phone and shooting thinly veiled looks of disgust at Kent. Frank, the assistant GM, who Kent always liked is in another corner, looking vaguely remorseful. A whole other bunch of guys in suits, who should surely be out in the arena now, the game is about to start — 

The game is about to start.

“Would you, um, excuse me, I gotta call my —” 

Kent gestures weakly towards the door, but doesn’t wait for a response, just ducks out and down the hallway, in the opposite direction of the locker room, towards a single stall restroom that he knows is down at the end of the corridor. 

Once he locks the door, he gives himself exactly thirty seconds to bend over the sink, hyperventilating a little, before he tells himself to pull it together, and straightens up to look at his reflection. 

He’s sweating, even with the air conditioned chill of the rink, and his hair is starting to curl around the edges. So much for pulling it together. 

Kent unlocks his phone with shaking hands and dials his agent. 

She picks up on the first ring, and immediately starts talking. 

“I just found out too Kent. Jesus, but they kept this one fucking close to the chest. You’re going to the Falconers, they just faxed your new paperwork over ”. 

“You didn’t know?”. There’s one split second of insanity where he thinks that maybe Linda negotiated the trade on his behalf, that it’s not too late, they can go back and change this, they can make it better — 

“Jesus, Kent, of course I didn’t know. I found out approximately 30 seconds ago, those assholes. Only the Aces would do it this way —” 

She breaks off mid-sentence and Kent hears the rustle of papers, her keyboard clacking as she types something furiously. 

There’s a brief pause for a second and then she asks — 

“They didn’t tell you why?” 

Kent shakes his head no, then remembers that Linda can’t see him and says it out loud. 

She curses, a long string of expletives that just sound wrong in her voice. Kent thinks vaguely that he might find the whole situation funny, if it were, you know. So not funny. 

“We’ll get to the bottom of this, Kent. Usually, you might a little more time to get out of there at least, get your affairs in order, but the Falconers have a game night after tomorrow, and it seems like the Aces are pretty eager to see you gone. I’ll have a car sent to pick you up, just call me back when you’re on the way to the airport”. 

Kent still has at least a million questions (a nicely conservative estimate) running through his head, but Linda clearly doesn’t have any more answers than he does, so he just says okay, that he’ll call her back and hangs up. 

He nearly drops the phone as he brings it down from his ear, his hands are shaking so violently now. He places it carefully on the edge of the sink instead. 

“Steady on now,” he tells his reflection in the mirror. It snarls back at him. 

He turns against the wall, to feel the cool tile against his forehead, and screams silently, just for a second. 

***

They don’t let him go back to the locker room to say goodbye to the team before the game, don’t let him tell them goodbye as their captain. As their friend. 

Kent doesn’t think he’ll ever forgive them for that one. Whatever their problem is with him, it wasn’t with his goddamn captaincy, or they could have just taken that away, made him play out the rest of his contract without it. He might have even let them. 

He texts Swoops anyway, juggling gear bag in his arms, even as Frank is ushering him along to the back door. 

Kent knows that by the time the first period is over, he’ll probably be in the air, already on the way to the Falcs, but the thought of the news breaking during the game, that the team are probably going to find out from some stupid press lackey makes him want to scream again. Everything’s fine though. He’s keeping it together. 

Kent Parson: I’m fine. Going 2 falconers. Team in ur hands now buddy. 

He thinks for a minute and then adds: 

Kent Parson: I’ll call u tmmrw

Kent slides his phone into his pocket as he steps out into the night, It’s early yet, so the air is still warm, but it already feels different than it did just an hour ago when Kent showed up at the rink. 

Kent thinks for a minute that Frank is going to actually say something, offer some kind of explanation, but the older man doesn’t. 

“You have a ride?”

Kent had hitched a ride to the rink with Swoops that afternoon, thinking there was a decent chance the team would be going out after the game. No chance of that now, clearly. 

Kent thinks he can hear the roar of the crowd as he nods, and turns away, heading to the waiting car. 

***

The news actually breaks while Kent is in the car on the way to his apartment. It’s a little sooner than he thought it would be, but he guesses the captain not showing up for the game with no explanation, and no appearance on the list of scratches is as good a hint as any. 

He reads the headlines on Twitter as they hit a few minutes of traffic. #parsontrade is trending. Which, of course it is. 

@Deadspin: Trade confirmed, @LasVegasAces captain @therealkentparson to go to @ProvidenceFalconers for @BorisLenkevich and draft pick #parsontrade. 

@ProvidenceFalconers: Excited to welcome @therealkentparson. 

@LasVegasAces: Thanking @therealkentparson for his years of dedication. Good luck @ProvidenceFalconers. 

He snorts at the last one, then thumbs through a couple of fan posts he’s been tagged in. 

@Kparsenumber1: what were they THINKING? @therealkentparson for some no-name and a draft pick? #parsontrade

@kelseysullivan: no no-trade clause, but you’d think they’d want to hold onto their record? #parsontrade

@Deadspin: Is this the most lopsided trade of the decade? Stanley cup champion, Calder, Art Ross winner @therealkentparson to go to @ProvidenceFalconers. Link in bio. 

@DanielKruse: 5 years into a seven year contract, on track to win the Art Ross for the second year running, Providence welcomes @therealkentparson! #parsontrade

@hockeystacey11: jeez, whatever happened to the no-trade clause? #parsontrade

@kelseysullivan: @hockeystacey11 He didn’t have a no-trade clause you can only get one if you’re over 27 or have played for seven seasons, and he’s just coming up on his sixth. 

It seems like the internet knows more about the trade than he does, which shouldn’t surprise him, but it does. Actually, it kinda pisses him off. He reads the confirmed details of his own trade on Hockey News, it looks like the Aces are retaining some percentage of his salary. From what he can tell, the Falconers are getting a pretty fucking sweet deal, from his point of view at least. 

There has to be something else going on, some other piece of the puzzle that Kent isn’t seeing, because it’s not even a multi-player trade deal, just him for some no-namer development player and a draft pick. Quite frankly, it’s a little insulting, considering his record and his captaincy, and the fact that he brought this goddamn franchise the freaking Stanley Cup. 

He retweets the Providence Falconers tweet anyway, adding a smiley face for good measure, and thinks a minute before sending out his own. 

@therealkentparson: on my way @ProvidenceFalconers. Go Falcs! 

Kent can’t muster up the energy to read anything else, and logs off Twitter, feeling sour. 

Linda: Your flight is at 9:30. Security knows you’re coming.

Kent checks his watch, a flashy piece of shit he bought with his first rookie bonus and curses. It’s almost 8:00 now, and he estimates he has at most 15 minutes to spend in his apartment (his old apartment, his brain cuts in unhelpfully) before he has to be back in the car and headed towards the airport. Las Vegas traffic usually isn’t that bad, but he’s pretty sure it’s Fight Night at one of the casinos, and Celine Dion is still in residency, so he better get a move on if he’s going to make it on time. 

The car service helpfully waits outside while Kent goes to pack up the last six years of his life in a quarter of an hour. What does he even need? He ends up just grabbing the bag he never fully unpacked from the last roadie, stuffing in some gear and shit, double checking for his passport, and grabbing a blue gatorade from the fridge to drink on the way to the airport. Flying always dehydrates him like nothing else. 

Everything else is gonna have to be shipped, and won’t that be a fun little nightmare to deal with. Kit Purrson stalks up to him, head butting his legs until he picks her up and gives her a little head rub. 

“Be good, okay?” He scratches her behind the ears, the way he knows she likes. “The cat sitter will be here tomorrow, and I’ll get you shipped out just as soon as I find a new apartment for us, okay?” 

He knows she can’t understand, but her mewl sounds like she’s agreeing, which makes him feel a little better. 

Fuck, he hopes she’s going to like Providence. It’s not like either of them have much of a choice now. 

***

Kent calls Linda again on the way to the airport. 

She sounds a little breathless which is understandable, considering that her star client has been unceremoniously dumped without real explanation, but her words are back to her usual no-nonsense tone, which he definitely appreciates. 

“Your ticket is in your email. I’ll send hotel confirmation while you’re in the air, and we’ll deal with everything else when you get there”. 

“Thanks Linda”, Kent says, then pauses. He knows that it’s going to be a sleepless night for her, and that she’s going to spend the next few weeks helping him rearrange his life. But the question is still out of his mouth before he can stop it. 

“Still no word on why?”. He knows the Aces had hinted to her in no uncertain terms that they wanted to resign him when his contract was up next year, maybe someone had slipped up and told her something — 

She sighs. “We’ll figure this out Kent. Have a safe flight”. 

***

Kent can’t sleep on the fucking plane. He’s not sure what kind of black magic Linda worked to get him a first class seat on a last minute flight from Las Vegas to Providence at this hour, but he’s eternally grateful. 

Kent might not be able to sleep, but everyone around him seems dead to the world, which affords him at least some measure of privacy. 

He should definitely be sleeping right now. Kent went straight from about to play a game, to being told he was being traded, to throwing together a bag of his stuff and making sure his cat sitter was available for Kit, and now he’s on a plane, heading to a new team. 

At least it’s a different conference, so he won’t have to worry about playing the Aces for a few games at least. He should probably check the schedule. Kent adds that to the beginning of a mental list before he realizes there are a lot of things he should probably do, and he’s probably going to forget 90% of them. 

Kent pulls his phone out and starts making a list in the notes app. 

Apartment  
Moving Stuff  
Kit  
New apartment  
Car 

Fuck. He’s so bad at this. But why wouldn’t he be? He’s never been fucking traded before. He knows that shit like this happens, it’s part of the game, it’s what they all sign up for. He knows guys that have been traded in the middle of the game with as little warning as he just got, just a couple of hours to pack their shit and leave. Kent thinks he would be even more mad than he is now if he got traded in the middle of game. 

So yeah, trades happen. But Kent? He just can’t wrap his head around this. He’s the captain, or he was, and not to be arrogant or anything but he’s a damn good player. The Aces aren’t rebuilding, at least not to his knowledge, and Kent is still young, hasn’t had any serious injuries, maybe has a few years still before he even reaches his peak as a player. He would think that it was about cap space, but that doesn’t make sense either, not with the Aces retaining so much of his salary. 

It just doesn’t make any sense. 

Kent’s about halfway through the flight when he runs out of potential reasons the Aces might have traded him and his mind turns about the actual team he’s currently headed towards at 500 mile per hour. The Providence Falconers. 

It shouldn’t make a real difference at this point, the team. Like yeah, it’s the Falconers, but at this point nothing makes sense anymore, so what does it matter? But also, it’s the Falconers. 

Kent tries to focus on the silver lining first. After the Aces, the Falconers are probably the team making the biggest splash this season, definitely at top of their division. He doesn’t know their exact standing, hasn’t watched too many of their games, but from what he can remember they’ve got some pretty solid lines, good points, an impressive couple of streaks of their own, and quite honestly, the cap space for a player like Kent, especially if the Aces are retaining some of his salary for the next year and a half before he goes into his next contract. So yeah, it makes sense from that side of things. 

But other than that? 

There’s Jack first of all. Jack, the shining star of the franchise. Jack, who’d been handed the A before the end of his first season, and the captaincy not long after that. Jack, who had made it oh so pointedly clear that he had no interest in playing with Kent ever again, who had chosen a team on the other side of the country to practically ensure it. Kent can barely think about their interactions, after the Draft, when Jack had been at Samwell, without feeling a swell of guilt and shame, without wanting to cry sometimes. 

Their interactions on ice have been slightly less disastrous, but Kent always had Swoops to hold him back a little, keep his head in the game. And Jack was just as much a hockey robot as ever, so he probably didn’t even register Kent’s presence. 

Kent had seen Jack at the NHL All-Stars game only a few weeks ago, and had mostly been able to ignore him. It was Jack’s first time at All-Stars as a player, and the media had swarmed him, thrown into a frenzy by the hockey legacy of it all. 

They had shaken hands, Kent remembers now. Someone had tried to introduce them, the idiot, as if the details of their relationship weren’t the most speculated about in the league of all time. Jack had stood there frozen for a minute, and when it got so awkward that Kent couldn’t take it anymore, he had extended a hand. 

We know each other actually. Good to see ya Zimms. 

Jack had accepted his hand, flinty steel in his blue eyes. Kent had made an excuse to leave after exactly thirty seconds, and had pointedly avoided thinking about it ever since. 

So yeah, it’s safe to say that Kent honestly doesn’t know where he stands with Jack at this point. Except he’s pretty sure the guy hates his guts. 

Not to mention that Jack’s probably not the only one on the Falconers who feels that way. There’s Alexei Mashkov, the d-man who always calls Kent a dirty rat in Russian whenever they’re on the ice together. A whole bunch of other guys who Kent knows he’s scored dirty hits on, just because he can’t help showing off whenever him and Jack are on the same ice. 

If the Aces management were looking to just completely screw him over in every possible way, well. It didn’t get much better than this.


	2. Ice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kent makes it to Providence. Welcomes vary.

His flight lands at 5:30 a.m., Providence time. It’s not that bad of a time difference, but Kent will bet anything that it’s still going hit him like a wall later, especially when his lack of sleep catches up to him. When Kent turns his phone off airplane mode, it buzzes so incessantly with incoming messages, that Kent just puts it on the little table and waits for the notifications to stop. 

The guy across the aisle raises his eyebrows and grins sleepily at Kent. 

“Popular guy, huh?” 

Kent smiles back, more out of instinct than anything else. The guy is cute, some tiny part of his subconscious notes, shaggy hair and big brown eyes. 

“You have no idea”. 

The guy looks like he’s going to say something else, but Kent turns back to his phone before he has the chance. 

A good chunk of the messages are in the Aces group chat. 

Pickle : Dude wtf  
Dills: Where’d you go game is starting 

Danny: A trade??  
Pickle: Parse, you know about this?  
Pickle: Fuckkkkkkk

Kent doesn’t read them all. The bulk of them had been sent after the game ended, in what seems like was a brutal overtime loss for the Aces. No one seems to quite know what happened. Kent not being there in the first line had apparently thrown the whole team for a loop, and when the news broke after first period, the whole thing seems like it devolved into, to put it gently, a hot mess. Some of the guys are pretty blunt in their assessment of Kent’s trade, but no one seems to blame Kent for the loss, which is good at least. 

Not to mention this apparently marks the only time in recent history that none of the Aces were made available for post-game interviews. So, that says something. What it says, Kent doesn’t really know. 

He ignores the group chat for now. He gets a message that’s just a thumbs-up emoji from Snowy, the Falconers goalie. He’s run into the guy at several All-Stars game, always seemed nice enough to Kent. Maybe he’ll have at least one friend on the team. 

Kent thumbs off quick responses to his mom and sister. Neither of them really understand hockey like that, but they know he’s been traded, and since he hasn’t told them about it, can probably guess that he wasn’t expecting it. He tells Swoops he’ll call him later. That’s gonna be a longer conversation, for sure. 

And there, from an unknown number. 

Number Unknown: Welcome to the team, Kenny

So yeah. There it is. He’s totally fucked. 

***

Georgia Martin is the assistant GM for the Falconers, and Kent immediately recognizes her as a fellow badass when she calls, sounding incredibly tired but still peppy. You didn’t get that combination without at least a little badassery, so Kent listens carefully as she speaks, even though at this point he thinks he might actually be in some kind of living coma. 

“Sorry we don’t have anyone there to greet you, Kent. Our game tonight went a little longer than anyone expected”. 

“That’s okay”. He knows his voice is quiet, a little raspy, but pulling out media Kent right now, at this moment when no one is looking at him, no one is watching him, feels just out of his capabilities. “Did you win?”

We. Did we win. 

“Pulled it out in overtime,” she says, sounding cheerful. 

“That’s good”, he says, meaning it. Better than the Aces had done anyway. He wonders briefly if the news of his trade had spread before the game, if the Falcs had to play with the knowledge that he was on the way to join them, just as the Aces has to play with the knowledge that he was gone. The news must have reached them by then, time difference and all that. 

“We have a late practice today, but come by a little earlier. We’ll get you in with management, meet the team”. 

“Sounds good. Thanks ma’am”. 

Her chuckle is deep and warm. 

“No need to call me ma’am, Kent. George will do just fine”. 

The taxi stand is deserted when Kent gets there, so Kent just steps up to the first cab on line, raps the window. 

“Where ya going?” 

The cabbie has a nasally New England accent. This should comfort him for absolutely no reason whatsoever, but it does. The air is frigid and Kent can see his breath in the air as he tries to remember what hotel Linda had said. 

“The Hilton, please”. 

The cabbie grunts in acknowledgment, slings Kent’s stuff in the back of the car, and then says exactly nothing else all the way to downtown, which Kent can certainly appreciate. 

*** 

Kent absolutely collapses when he gets to the hotel, barely managing to plug his phone in and set an alarm before passing out. 

When he wakes up to his alarm (Actually it’s snooze number 3, but who’s counting), Kent is briefly confused as to where he is, what bed he’s in. 

It happens sometimes. Kent wakes up in unfamiliar beds all the time, in hotels, on roadies, and can’t remember where he is. Sometimes he has to think about all the places he could be before real life sinks in. Is he back at his billet families in Rimouski? At home in Albany? 

Kent counts through the things he knows on his fingers, one by one. 

One: He is Providence, Rhode Island  
Two: Because he was traded to the Providence Falconers  
Three: He is about to go meet said team  
Four: Fuck

The biting reality of it all is enough to get Kent up and out of bed, a sharp pulse of anxiety pushing through the weariness that feels like it’s trying to drag every bone in his body back under the covers. 

In short order, Kent throws on some clothes, orders room service, eats a stale energy bar he finds in his bag while he’s waiting for room service to arrive, chokes down some eggs and spinach, and calls an Uber to the rink. He knows that Linda will be arranging some kind of rental car for him, until he can get a new one, but that feels out of his capabilities right now. Does this mean he has to sell Wanda? Fuck, he really loves that car. 

Providence passes by in a haze of white and brown. Ice and mud, that’s all there seems to be, on the ground and it’s a stark contrast from the desert landscape he’s used to. The houses are also different from the ones in Las Vegas, smaller and closer together. 

It actually reminds him of home somewhat. It honestly has the same bleak feel of upstate New York a few too many weeks into winter, when everyone is sick and tired of scraping snow and ice off their car windows and shoveling out the driveway. 

The Uber driver drops him off at the front of the rink, gives him a quizzical look. 

“This it?” 

“Yeah, thanks man”. Kent tips the guy a couple of dollars in the app, and slides out, dragging his gear bag with him. It didn’t even have that much in it, just a pair of skates, some Under Armour. The rest of gear from his locker should be here later today, although he assumes the Falcs are going to have some new jerseys for him. 

He’s been to this arena before of course, but he’s never actually never gone in the front entrance of this place before, only through the player’s entrance with the rest of the team. Kent enters through the front doors and stands in the foyer a little awkwardly, not sure where to go. 

He’s about to just start walking (anything seems better than just standing there), when he hears his name. 

“Kent!”

He recognizes the voice from last night, and turns toward it, fixing his media smile firmly in place. 

It’s George Martin, of course. He remembers watching her in the Olympics years ago, and she looks exactly the same as she did then, bounding towards him with a hand outstretched. He takes it, somewhat dazed. 

“Good morning! Find the place okay? Meetings just this way!”

Without waiting for an answer, she turns and begins walking to the side, opening a stairwell door and holding it open for him. 

He has to jog a little to catch up with her, gear bag thudding awkwardly over his shoulder. 

She keeps talking all the way to the meeting, but he doesn’t remember a word of it, barely registers anything other than fluorescent lighting and the faint smell of cleaning fluid in the air. 

The meeting goes okay, Kent thinks. They have trays of those little pastries, and he takes two. One to eat in approximately one bite, the other to pick at. The room is full of manager types - GM, an athletic trainer, a guy in a sharp suit that he assumes is the money, but everyone is friendly enough, shakes his hand. 

He gets asked some pretty normal questions - “Does he need any help settling in” - No, but he’ll let them know, 

“Well, son, welcome to the team”. Everyone nods in agreement. “Anything we should be aware of?” 

This is from the GM, who confusingly enough is also named Chris. 

He’s not sure, but he thinks what the guy is actually asking is “Why on earth did the Aces want to trade you” and “Are there any stories we need to go bury? Maybe a dead body?” or “Anything at all to help explain why the Aces would give up their star forward in the middle of his highest scoring season?” 

Kent thinks back to the other Chris, Chris from Las Vegas and his steely eyes, to Frank’s worried expression as he practically shoved Kent out the door, and shakes his head no. 

“Nothing that I’m aware of, Sir”

He gets more nods at that, a couple of thoughtful hums. The suited guy looks at him thoughtfully, but doesn’t say anything. 

Quite honestly, apart from George, who has been exuberantly welcoming and warm, the rest of management seems a little hesitant. As though they don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but they’re just confused as to how exactly Kent has ended up here. 

He can relate to that. 

“Practice time, I think”, George says at last, when the room is quiet again. “Unless you have any more questions Kent?” 

He shakes his head. Good, ice, yes, hockey. He can do this. 

George doesn’t say anything else as she leads him out of the conference room and down a hallway, and Kent is suddenly struck by the parallels. He was in this exact situation in reverse less than 24 hours ago. Now he’s on the East Coast, about to meet a bunch of players who probably want to eat him for breakfast and — 

“Hey Parson” 

Jack is there, leaning against to the wall, next to the door of what Kent assumes is the locker room, given the general sounds of ruckus coming from within. 

Don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t say it. 

“Hey, Zimms”

Kent sees a flicker in Jack’s blue eyes at the words. It’s gone as quickly as it appeared, and Jack is pushing himself off the wall, holding a hand out for Kent to shake. 

“Good to see ya”. As if they were old friends catching up and not two meteors destined to cause mutual destruction. Easy, breezy. 

“Ready to meet the team?” 

Kent doesn’t think he’s ever been less ready for anything in his whole life, except perhaps showing up to the draft the day after Jack’s overdose, but he doesn’t think he can really say that. So he doesn’t. 

“Yeah man. Let’s do it”. 

The Falconers’ locker room is at once aching similar to the Aces. All locker rooms are basically the same thing once you’ve been around the show a few times, just lots of sweaty guys and equally sweaty laundry. 

Jack claps a hand on his back, making a point of making eye contact with the guys that are there. 

“Everyone, this is Kent Parson, our newest Falc. Let’s make him feel welcome, eh boys?” 

There’s a general murmur of assent, a chorus of “Welcome to the team, man”.

Jack makes a few introductions, some of the guys offering fist bumps or slaps on the back, others just nodding, a little more wary. And it’s not like he expected a fucking red carpet rolled out, but jeez. Tough crowd. 

Kent can’t keep track of everyone’s name, but he manages a few. There are the guys he already knows of course - Snowy, who flashes a grin at him from a corner. Mashkov, who is too big to miss, even in this room of jumbo sized hockey goons. When Jack introduces Rusty, a freckle-faced red head, Kent grins, reaching out a hand. 

“Sick goal against the Pens the other night dude” 

Kent had watched the game in a hotel lobby on a roadie, one of the few Falcs games he had actually managed to catch this season and remembers being impressed by this kid. Good wrists, Swoops had said, and Kent had nodded in agreement. 

The kid flushes, then grins. He can’t be more than 19 or 20, and seems on the quieter side, but his smile is infectious. 

“Thanks. Good to meet ya”. 

“How does it feel to meet your idol Rusty?” one of the guys calls from across the locker room. 

Kent takes another look. The kid is flushing now, tips of his ears a bright red, but other than that he still seems chill, not a hint of the hero-worship that Kent usually had to dissuade his rookies from. That’s good. 

“Aw, stuff it,” Rusty mutters, looking a little embarrassed. 

“You won’t be idolizing him once you find out how much Britney Spears he tries to play in the locker room”

It’s Jack. His face is as straight as ever, but the guys start laughing all the same, and it takes the attention away from the embarrassed Rusty. Jack’s not looking at him, but Kent imagines him thinking See? That’s how a captain does it. Kent turns away. 

George comes up being them just then, and hands Kent a couple of jerseys, home and away. At least his number is still the same. Kent doesn’t think he could handle giving up the 90 at this point, it’s so much a part of him.

He’ll get these guys on his side soon enough. He just needs to show them what he can do on ice. 

***

Ice is always predictable, has been since he was three years old and learning to skate on the pond. Ice is predictable, even if the rink is different, and Kent leans in to the workout, trying to get a feel for the rink, stretching his tight muscles after the plane, trying to shake off the jet lag that’s clinging on to his body until he can go back to his hotel room and nap. 

The Falconers Coach is a big guy, burly and powerful looking even though he must be in his 50s. Kent knows he played in the league himself at one point, but can’t remember for what teams, or when the guy retired. He makes a point to look it up when he gets back to the hotel. Everyone in hockey knows that good players don’t always make good coaches, but the team seems to respect this guy at least, which is always a good sign. 

He puts Kent on a line with Jack and Rusty, tells them to show him what they can do. They fumble through a few passes at first. Rusty’s not used to Kent’s speed, and keeps sending the puck just a little off, but they get better after a few gos at it, and Kent thinks that with some practice they could really have something. 

With Jack, it’s different. Turns out, they still play pretty well together, even after all the years, with everything that’s happened between them. Jack stills knows where Kent is going to be, knows when to send the puck his way, even if sometimes it feels a little forced. 

It’s not the best hockey they’ve ever played together, but it’s Kent and Jack so it’s still pretty good, and Coach seems satisfied at least, maybe enough to let Kent start on the first line. 

To be honest, Jack feels a little stiff on the ice to him, but Coach doesn’t say anything, so maybe it’s just in Kent’s imagination. Kent has to try not to let himself get caught up in the mind-crushing what ifs. He hasn’t been on the ice with Jack, not like this, since they were 17 years old and winning the Memorial Cup together, burning with the flame of being young and successful and in love, or so he had thought. It’s different now. Kent is faster than he was, and Jack is stronger, and Rusty is there instead of Jazzy, the other winger that had always got put on their line in Rimouski. 

Kent is more aware of the other players now too, sizing them up for strengths and weaknesses, cataloguing who’s on the ice and where. That’s different, because it used to just be him and Zimms on the ice. 

Different, but the same.

Them against the world. 

***

There’s always a faint hum at any rink if it’s quiet enough and you listen hard enough. You can’t ever hear it during practices, and never at all during games; there are just too many people in the building, too many blades on ice, too many overlapping voices. 

But Kent hears it the next morning, when he shows up at the rink so early he half expects to have to bribe his way in. 

But there’s a side door that’s unlocked and Kent slips onto the ice unimpeded. Practice isn’t until later, and they have a game tonight, but Kent wants to get a better feel for the ice, now that it’s home ice and not just a blurred stop on a roadie. 

He barely even remembers this barn from the last year and a half, ever since Jack joined the Falconers. Kent was always so tense when their teams were playing that he’s not sure he remembers those games at all. 

Kent loops around the rink in a lazy warmup, spills a bucket of pucks on the ice, and gets to it. 

When he finishes hitting the last puck into the net, he spins to a stop. Coach is watching him from the bench, an unintelligible look on his face. 

“You better be fresh for practice, Parson,” is all he says, before turning away from the ice. 

“Yessir”, Kent calls, raising his stick in acknowledgment even though Coach isn’t looking his way anymore. He doesn’t think he just got scolded, he knows from yesterday that Coach is not one to pull his punches, just a reminder that Kent’s career isn’t the only thing on the line for the Falcs. 

And it’s not like he expects to be first line, right after a trade like that, but we wants it, feels like he needs to prove himself all over again, and one extra morning of practice definitely isn’t going to hurt. 

Kent turns back towards the goal. 

Center, right, left, high, low.

The pucks bounce in, one by one. 

***

The cheer of the crowd sounds especially loud when Kent skates onto Providence ice that night for the first time as a Falconer. 

Nice fans, Kent thinks. Somehow, he doesn’t think there are that many other teams, especially on this coast that would be quite so welcoming. Maybe the Falconer’s short history as a franchise will actually work in his favor, the fans just as desperate to win another cup as he is. 

They’re playing the Buffalo Sabres tonight, but Kent knows better than to expect an easy game just because the Sabres are currently clawing for their position in the middle of the pack. Good teams have clawed their way back from worse, including the Aces, and Kent doesn’t take anybody for granted anymore, not in this sport. On the ice or off it. 

The Falcs lose the first faceoff, but gain control of the puck back quickly. The Falcs have some beautiful lines, Kent thinks, as he awaits his next shift on the bench. Well matched and good teamwork across the board. 

The Sabres are ragging on him every chance they get, but if Kent learned one thing in Vegas, it was how to chirp, until practically anybody would be begging him to shut up. 

“Damn Parson. They didn’t wash out your mouth when you got traded?”

Kent just lets a wolfish grin slip out, picks up the puck when Tater dusts it off, and keeps his head in the game. 

A small part of Kent is relieved that both he and Jack scored a goal and assist in this first game of theirs, this first rematch of theirs on ice. He knows that they’re playing on the same team now, but he thinks that maybe the press won’t be comparing them quite so viciously after the game if they both show up strong out of the gate. In fact, Kent is particularly proud of his goal, a fucking beautiful slapshot that leaves the Sabres goalie flailing.

The Falconers win 3-1. 

Kent isn’t 100% included in the celly, when the guys pour onto center ice, but he’s been on the team for less than 24 hours, so it doesn’t particularly faze him. 

He’s called out for press. 

“You’re up Parson”. The Falcs PR person, whose name he can’t remember right now, gives him a warning look. They had only connected for a few minutes that morning about what he would say on the subject of the trade, but Kent’s not going to fuck this one up. He can’t afford to. 

The questions are more or less what he expected. 

“How’s the new line?” 

“Looking forward to more nights like tonight”. 

“You and Jack Zimmerman were famous in the Q for your chemistry. How does it feel to be playing with him again?”

Kent just says, “Jack is a wonderful player, and a great captain. I’m looking forward to working with him again”. 

It’s true, after all. 

The questions keep going. Kent keeps trying to bring it back to the game, focusing on his chemistry with Rusty, Jack’s goals, but it’s hard. Harder than it had been in Vegas, where he was seen as something as a hometown boy, and his charm was a little easier to spread. 

“Any comment on the trade?” 

“Obviously, trades are a part of hockey. The Aces and the wonderful people of Las Vegas have all my respect”. There, let them make comments on that. 

“So, is it safe to say you weren’t expecting the trade?” 

The Falcs PR person steps in at that question (he really should remember her name, what was her name?) and cuts the reporter off. 

“That’s it for now. Thanks everybody”. 

The reporters grumble a little at being cut off, but Kent is just relieved he doesn’t have to answer the question. Does he look like he was expecting the trade? Kent tries not to let his relief show too much on his face, just keeps smiling until the cameras turn away from him, and a few more seconds after that for good measure. 

Honestly, he still doesn’t really know what the trade looks like to everybody else. Apart from a bevy of devoted fans who were insistent that Kent must have requested the trade, the hockey bloggers hadn’t really known what to make of it, and were still speculating about it right in the lead up to tonight’s game. For all he knows, the team probably also thinks he requested a trade or something, just to get closer to Jack. 

***

The locker room is still raucous when Kent finishes getting his stuff together. Everyone is happy with the win, lingering and joking around with each other. 

His game day suit is a little wrinkly, but he doesn’t think it’s that noticeable. There had only been so much the hotel iron could do, not when up against a suit thrown so haphazardly in his bag. He really needs to get his stuff out here. 

“You coming out tonight Parse?”

That’s from Snowy, the goalie that Kent sorta knows.  
Kent pretends to think about it for a few seconds. You could not pay him enough money to go out right now, to have to keep pretending like this for a few more hours with a team he doesn’t know, but he has to keep up appearances, look like he’s really considering it. The invitation feels real at least, so that’s nice. 

He shakes his head. 

“I’m beat man. I’m going to sleep for the next twelve hours, and then maybe we’ll see”. Twelve hours might not be long enough, but it’ll be a start at least. 

“I thought Las Vegas knew how to party?”

This one is from Mashkov, but the chirp is friendly enough, and soon the talk devolves into a squabble about which bar they should hit up first. 

Kent relaxes a little as he throws the rest of his gear in his new locker, and goes to pull up Uber on his phone. He really needs to see about getting that rental car, or just getting a new car altogether, but that’s a tomorrow Kent problem for sure. 

“Need a ride?”. The question makes him jump - he hadn’t registered anyone that close to him he was so focused on his phone. 

It’s Jack, hair damp from a shower. He smells the same as he used to, Kent realizes, must still be wearing the same cologne that Alicia bought him for his 16th birthday all those year ago. It’s familiar, and comforting in a weird way he doesn’t want to think too hard about. 

He realizes that Jack is still waiting for an answer and panics, doesn’t want to seem like he’s just been standing there and smelling his new captain. 

“Sure thing cap”. Kent thinks his answer manages to come off the right amount of flippant and cheeky, but just Jack nods. Like this is something totally normal, something they do everyday. Jack waves goodbye to the team as they leave, calling out a breezy “Later boys”. Kent hurries in his wake, trying not to seem too visibly shellshocked. 

They go out the back this time, exiting to what must be the team parking lot. Kent realizes he somehow never got a full tour of the rink, not that he plans on spending a lot of time in places that aren’t the ice or locker room, but it’s always good to know your way around, and there seem to be a lot more doors in and out than Kent is used to. 

They crunch through a light layer of snow to where Jack has parked his car, a big black pickup.  
It’s not the kind of car Kent expected to see, and it kinda throws him off, although he can’t put his finger on why. It should be just a car, after all. 

The car ride back to the hotel is awkward at best. This is, after all, the first time the two of them have been alone in a confined space since their fight at Samwell, and Kent feels hyperaware of every breath he takes, every time he adjusts in his seat or turns his head a micro-fraction. 

Providence isn’t a big city, and Kent thinks they’re about halfway from the rink to his hotel when Jack breaks into the silence. 

“You have everything you need?” 

Jack says it with his captain voice on. It’s been years since Jack was his captain, but Kent still feels an immediate need to respond, feels like he’s been conditioned to respond to that tone of voice. 

“Yeah, I guess. I’m going to have to see about getting like, an apartment. And a car, and stuff. You know. And my cat over here and everything”. 

“Your cat?”

“Yeah, Kit. She’s awesome”. Kent carefully neglects to mention the second part of Kit Purrson’s name. He doesn’t think that Jack will find it particularly funny, that Kent basically has a cat named after himself, even if Kent isn’t exactly the one who named her. Kent wants to be offended that Jack doesn’t know this information already, because Kit definitely has more Instagram followers than Jack ever will, he’s such a luddite. But really, in the grand scheme of things that Jack and Kent no longer know about each other’s lives, this one is pretty minor, so he lets it slide. 

They sit in silence for a few more minutes, while Jack navigates the snowy streets with practiced ease. They’re stopped at what has to be the longest red light Kent has ever seen before Jack speaks again. 

“So the trade was pretty sudden, huh?” 

“Yeah”. Kent swallows. “It was”. 

He knows that Jack probably doesn’t mean anything by it. Heck, he might even think that Kent requested a trade in the first place. None of the articles Kent had skimmed seemed to have any more of an idea of the reason for the trade than he did, and he doubts that Jack suddenly has inside information on the inner workings of the Aces franchise. 

It still stings though, Jack’s words reminding him of everything he had just left behind, in a way not even the practice with a new team, the new jerseys with his name on the back could. 

Jack just nods, like he knew this information already and was just waiting for the confirmation from Kent. 

“You think you’re going to miss Vegas?”

Here it is, Kent thinks. This is Jack’s way of asking if Kent really did request the trade, maybe even specifically to the Falconers, in some sick twisted way of stealing Jack’s thunder, getting closer to him, moving back into his orbit. 

“I played with that team for six years. Of course I’m going to miss them. My best friend is there”. 

Kent thinks of Swoops, who he still hasn’t had time to call, of the Aces group chat he still hasn’t had the heart to respond to, or worse yet, leave. 

“But I guess we all get traded sometime, right?” 

“Hmm”, Jack says. As if that’s an answer. Asshole. Kent bets the Falcs would rather dissolve a a franchise than trade Jack away. 

An impossibly long minute later, they’re pulling up at the hotel and Kent is reaching to unclip the seat belt, get the heck out of this truck, when Jack drops another bombshell on him. 

“I have a boyfriend now. Eric. I think you guys met”. It’s still in that same monotone that Jack so rarely strays from, which only lends itself to the surreal nature of his words. 

Kent has a fleeting memory of a blond boy, tumbled over in front of Jack’s door that awful night at Samwell. 

“I’m not going to like, out you, or anything. But we’re thinking of coming out. Together. Maybe when he graduates. Thought you should know”. 

Why on earth would Kent want to know this? Know that he’s been replaced? He wants to run, wants to scream. Wants to lash out and hurt Jack the way he did at the EpiKegster. Why wasn’t he good enough? Jack couldn’t respond to a years worth of voicemails, but he could go and fall in love with somebody else, come out with somebody else?

Kent nods vaguely, then realizes that Jack might be waiting for a bit more of a response. 

“That’s cool. Good for you guys”. His voice sounds disingenuous, even to him, so he trys again. 

“I’m happy for you Zimms”. His voice breaks a little on the last syllable. Christ, he hopes Jack didn’t notice. He probably did. 

He isn’t sure what else Jack wants, and when he looks over, Jack is still staring straight ahead, hands still clutching the wheel at 10 and 2, even though the car is in park. When Kent drives, it’s all he can do to keep both hands on the wheel, but Zimms always was a better driver than him. 

“Look I’m not going to mess anything up for you. I didn’t want — I didn’t ask to be traded. I’m just here to play hockey, okay?”. When he doesn’t get a response, Kent rips his seatbelt off and opens the door, feeling like he’s just ripped his heart out and smeared its guts all over the front seat. “See you at practice”. 

Kent looks back only once he’s safely inside the lobby of the Providence downtown Hilton. Jack is still sitting in the same position, perfect posture as usual. Kent might be imagining it, but he thinks Jack might be shaking, very slightly.


	3. Lies are Wearing Off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kent has two important conversations, and doesn't have a third.

It takes a while, but Kent slowly settles in. He finds an apartment that he likes first, ten minutes away from the rink. Turns out the Providence real estate is a lot chiller than Las Vegas, who would have guessed. It doesn’t have the view that his Vegas pad did, but it’s not like there’s anything to see in Providence anyway, apart from snow and ice. Besides, it means he can arrange to get the rest of his stuff shipped out, along with Kit, and boy is he happy to see her. 

He buys a new flashy car simply because he can, although not before making sure it has four-wheel drive. He might be dumb sometimes, but he’s not completely stupid and New England winters 100% necessitate four wheel drive. He nicknames the car Cosmo, because he still misses the car he left behind in Vegas, and he thinks that Wanda would like to have a friend. Plus, the car is a nice cherry color that reminds Kent of a cosmopolitan, so it’s pretty fitting altogether. 

He gets Kit a new cat tree while he’s at it, and hopes that it will make her feel more at home. 

His dynamic with the Falcs is different than it had been with the Aces. There he had been the young, hotshot captain, selected first in the draft to build up the team, bring hockey to a dusty desert city. 

Here, it’s not like that. 

He’s still playing pretty well. Not quite as well as he was doing in Vegas, with Swoops on his line, with all the guys he’s known for years, but good enough. Good enough for the Coach to seem satisfied anyway, even if the famous Zimmerman-Parson No-Look One-Timer hasn’t materialized yet. The media is mostly laying off him too, once it becomes clear that they aren’t going to get any more details on the trade than they already have. 

He Skypes with Jeff one night on a roadie, exhausted after a long game, but determined to talk to his best friend. 

Jeff picks up looking worried, with dark circles under his eyes. It takes Kent a minute to realize that the worriedness isn’t directed at him, it’s just deep lines of tiredness that have sunk into his friend’s face, have etched out new wrinkles in the less than a month since Kent’s seen him in person. 

Kent had planned on ranting a little, about the trade, bout having to deal with Jack, the goddamn New England weather but —

“What’s up?”, he blurts instead. 

Jeff’s reply comes just a beat too quick and a fraction too high pitched. 

“Nothing”. 

At Kent’s raised eyebrow, Jeff sighs and elaborates. 

“It’s nothing you can worry about anyway, not anymore. Just some rumblings going around the front office here. You know how it is”. 

Boy, does Kent ever. That’s one thing that Kent doesn’t miss about Las Vegas, or about the captaincy for that matter. For all that Kent had been drafted to play hockey, to breathe youth and fresh air into a newbie franchise, there had always been politics in Vegas, some stuff he had to be aware of, and other stuff he tried to ignore. People he had to play nice with when they showed up to tour the locker room. Certain fundraisers to attend, casinos the Aces were welcome at, and a couple others they weren’t. 

What always made it more frustrating was how tight-lipped management could be about it. Sometimes it would be nice to just be given a list of which clubs not to go to, instead of being told to “use your judgement” and then hauled in front of the front office the next day for going to the wrong one. 

And yeah, it’s Vegas, and people tend to keep their business to themselves, but he gave like 6 years of his life to the place. Kent had always assumed it was the price of playing the game, and now that he knew it wasn’t, it felt incredibly freeing. 

He’s worried about Jeff though, who looks pale and tired, even over their crappy internet connection, like he was getting over a flu or a cold or something and still going out and playing back-to-back games.   
“I might not be your captain anymore, but you can still talk to me, you know that right?” Kent’s words come out forcibly sincere, but he refuses to look away, picking a fingernail where the screen can’t see. Jeff has always been there for him. He’s going to be there for Jeff, even if he’s currently sitting 3,000 miles away. 

“Yeah, buddy. I do. I know”. 

Kent feels reassured, which wasn’t really supposed to be the point of this conversation, but he trusts Jeff, trusts that the other guy will tell him what he can, so he takes it, and moves on.

“Good”. 

They switch topics pretty quickly after that. Kent does get to rant a little, about the New England weather, about Jack. 

“If he would just get over it, and pass the puck a little more, everything would be fine you know? I know he knows where I am on the ice, he always knows. It’s like a freaky sixth sense that he has”. 

Now apparently it’s Jeff’s turn to raise an eyebrow. Kent doesn’t think he looked quite this saucy when it was his turn to be skeptical, but he lets it slide. 

“Have you talked to him about it?”

“He doesn’t want to talk,” Kent mutters. He doesn’t actually know whether that’s true or not, but he assumes is. Jack certainly hasn’t made any more effort to spend one-on-one time with Kent, not since dropping the boyfriend bombshell. And Kent would basically rather die before he talked to Coach or one of the alternates about it. 

Jeff still looks dubious, and it’s enough for Kent to burst out —

“He doesn’t want to allright? He’s happy here, was happy before I came, he doesn’t need me anymore. Not to play hockey, or do anything else”. 

Jeff’s reply is quiet.

“Just because he doesn’t need you anymore doesn’t mean he doesn’t want you there”. 

Which like, could be true, theoretically. With Jack though, there’s just too much history there. Kent’s never bothered coming out to Jeff, but he’s also never felt like he had to. He’s like 80% sure Jeff knows he’s gay (okay like 100% sure), but it’s never seemed to matter with him, so they’ve never talked about it. Kent likes that about him. Still, even Jeff doesn’t know the full extent of his history with Jack, despite whatever rumors have followed the two of them since Juniors, and Kent’s not going to pick this moment to spill his guts, not when his friend is so obviously worried about other things. 

Jeff sighs when Kent doesn’t respond immediately, scratches his beard. 

“For what it’s worth, Kent, I think you should talk to him”. 

Kent scrubs a hand across the top of his hand. His hair is getting long again, curls starting to pop out here and there. He hasn’t found a barber in Providence yet, but the minute the team gets back he’s going to. 

“I’ll think about it,” Kent promises. He means it too. To be honest, he didn’t think that Jack would ever let emotions get in the way of hockey, it was just too important to him. And Jack is doing a good job of faking it but — 

He changes the subject. 

“How’s Jillian doing?” 

Jeff eyes him for a split second longer, then happily launches into a story about his girlfriend, Jillian, and her poorly behaved black lab, Daisy. 

Kent listens, and smiles. 

***

The next few games pass by quickly. The team gets back to Providence, has a home game, and then they’re off on yet another roadie. 

Kent has been rooming with Rusty in the hotels, which is probably for the best. The kid is young, but surprisingly quiet, and doesn’t say anything when Kent just wants to go back to the hotel room and watch HGTV without talking every night. 

They’re at the point where Jack being weird around him is starting to get picked up on by the other members of the team. The rest of the team has accepted his presence as much as they can, but Jack’s still the captain, and consciously or not they look to him for direction. No one has said anything about it, or outwardly excluded him or anything like that, but it’s just a feeling, spreading around the locker room. The Falcs are loyal like that, and Kent would recognize it as a good thing, except it’s kinda making his life miserable right now. 

Kent works not to resent Jack, tries not to push, but it’s hard at the same time. He’s playing with the memories of what he left behind in Las Vegas, the team he had spent five years building as captain, as well as the knowledge of what him and Jack could be on the ice. Rusty too for that matter. The things all three of them could accomplish on their line if Jack would just let them. 

Kent wants to work it out, wants them to be able to keep it off the ice at the very least, but he also has painful, visceral memories of could happen if he pushes too hard. A bottle of spilled pills. Jack, not breathing on the floor of a bathroom. The party at Samwell that went so very wrong. 

So he’s not going to push this time. 

But still. Kent thinks about what Jeff said when they talked, because he promised, and he’s never broken a promise to Swoops. He decides that maybe it is worth a try, to at least try and apologize for some of the stuff he said, let Jack know that he doesn’t expect anything from him, give the guy a chance to get some stuff off his back too. 

He tries in the locker room, after a win against the Leafs that he hopes will have softened Jack up. 

“Hey Jack. Got time for a drink?’

But it comes out all wrong. He always comes off on the wrong foot with Jack, doesn’t know how to interact with him anymore. It comes out like he’s trying to be flirty and charming, when really he’s just trying not to get rejected. 

Jack eyes him, barely managing to hide his disgust. Disgust at Kent. 

“Not tonight, bro”. Jack has never called him bro before, and it stings. 

“Laters, yeah?” Jack says to the room at large. Goodbyes echo back at him. The perfect captain. 

Jack leaves the locker room, probably already on the way back to the hotel to call his boyfriend. 

It didn’t work. Jack doesn’t want to talk to him. He’ll probably never get Jack alone in a room for a conversation ever again. 

Mashkov eyes him from his corner of the locker room. 

“Come on Parsnip. I get drink with you”, he calls over. 

“That’s not my nickname”, Kent protests. He still hasn’t gotten a nickname that’s stuck over here. He had been Parse on the Aces, but Jack just calls him Parson, when he’s not calling him bro apparently, and the other guys have thus far followed suit. 

Still, he’s not going to say no to some human interaction right now, and he likes Alexei Mashkov well enough, probably even the most on the whole team after like, Rusty. 

Plus, it turns out the guy is a great hockey player when he’s not trying to smash Kent’s brains into the ice. He’s pretty sure that defensemen aren’t supposed to score that many goals, and Mashkov has gotten quite a few this season, enough to be making some news of his own. 

They go to a quiet sports bar on the edge of downtown. Kent orders a coke at the bar, brings it back to the booth Mashkov has chosen. Kent likes this bar, he decides. The dark paneling makes it feel cozy. It’s noisy enough to have a conversation without worrying about being overheard, but not so noisy that you have to worry about being overheard. There are a couple of TVs showing various sports games, but no hockey, and the bartender didn’t even glance up when Kent had asked for a coke with ice poured into a highball glass. 

Kent barely has time to take a sip before Mashkov jumps right into it. 

“So, you and Jack have problem, yes?”

Kent swallows hard. It’s not like he didn’t think it would come up, but he doesn’t know how to explain it, didn’t think he would have to so soon. 

He quickly settles for the easiest version of the truth. 

“We don’t exactly have a problem. Things just aren’t that easy between us”. 

“Why not?”

Kent really isn’t used to talking about this. In fact, he doesn’t think he’s ever talked about this with anyone that knew both him and Jack the way Alexei Mashkov does. Jeff knows a little, obviously, but it’s not like Jeff knows Jack personally, apart from an interaction or two on the ice. 

“It’s just not. We have a lot of…history… between the two of us”. Kent knows the answer isn’t satisfactory in any sense of the word, but the story is long, and it’s not pretty, and he’s tired. 

“History”. Mashkov takes a sip of his own drink, then sets it down carefully on the coaster in front of him. “Because you guys use to date, and now Jack date someone else, yes?” 

Kent’s drink nearly comes flying out his nose. 

“How —” 

“He say something, long time ago about a relationship gone bad. Then he tell me about Bitty the baker, tells me to keep secret. When you traded, Jack shut off, very sad all the time. I put two and two together”. 

Mashkov looks proud of his detective work, but also remorseful, as if what had happened between Kent and Jack was somehow his fault. 

Kent thinks somewhat wildly that this is on par with the biggest shocks of his life, which as of so far include getting drafted as first pick the day after his best friend overdosed, and getting traded out of the blue from the NHL team of which he was the captain. So yeah. The bar is pretty high. 

His ridiculous brain brain chooses to fixate on the last thing Mashkov said instead of the fact that there’s apparently a whole other person out there that knows about him and Jack, knows about their relationship. 

“Jack’s sad?”

Kent doesn’t want Jack to be sad, even if he himself is kinda sad right now. 

Mashkov’s response is slow and careful. 

“He can be hard to read sometimes. But I know captain, know what it looks like when he hurt” 

Hurt, okay. Kent can’t do this anymore. 

“Don’t tell anyone, okay?”

“I is not telling any—“

That’s about all Kent needs to hear before he’s standing up, pushing out of the booth. 

“I really don’t want to talk about it anymore. Have a good night, okay?” 

He turns to leave, gathering his jacket from the seat on the way out. 

He doesn’t see Mashkov reaching out to sip his still full drink, doesn’t see the surprise cross the other man’s expression, or the thoughtful look aimed at his back. 

***

Kent mutters a soft apology to Mashkov in Russian the next time he sees the guy in the locker room. Mashkov looks up, startled, glances at Snowy, and then back at Kent, as though he thought the apology must have come from the goalie. 

Kent doesn’t speak Russian, not really, but he was a damned good captain and had made a valiant effort every season to try. They had two Russian d-men on the Aces, Pickle and Dills, one of whom was so fresh he barely spoke a word of English, and Kent has always secretly cherished his ability to make the two of them laugh by shouting out some butchered Russian insult whenever he got the chance. 

Why do you apologize? Mashkov says. At least Kent thinks that’s what he says. There’s definitely a why and a sorry in there.   
Because rude. Kent manages. He absolutely mangled the pronunciation, but he thinks he at least got the words out. Snowy actually is looking up now, a smirk spreading across his face, mouth opening to chirp Kent but —

Mashkov smiles. 

“No need to say sorry, Parsley. And best stop speaking Russian now, yes?” 

“That’s not my nickname either”, Kent protests. He’s actually not sure which is worse, Parsnip or Parsley, but it’s gotta be a close tie. 

Mashkov smiles wider. “No?”

“Careful there Parsley”, Rusty shouts from across the locker room. “Tater just wants another vegetable on the team”. 

Jack is glaring across the locker room at them both, possibly having heard the tail end of their conversation. 

“Let’s get on the ice guys. Coach is waiting”. 

They’re actually still among the earlier guys in the locker room, and in fact Kent thinks there are a couple of guys that haven’t even shown up yet, but he’s not about to argue, not with that look on Jack’s face. 

And after that, they’re good. Mashkov passes him the puck in practice, doesn’t bring their conversation up again, doesn’t say anything in fact except “Good game Parsley” or “Okay, Mr. fast guy” 

Kent thinks he should maybe be worried, that there’s suddenly this other guy that apparently knows he’s gay, knows about him and Jack, that was able to guess based on what basically amounts to context clues. 

Although, now that he thinks about it, he supposes that Jack’s boyfriend must also know about him. Even if Jack didn’t tell him, he’s pretty sure he had heard that whole conversation between him and Jack that time at Samwell, and that was pretty incriminating. 

Maybe he should worry more about that guy. 

It’s funny, because despite how tense it is, Jack is still always on his radar. He means what he said on Skype to Jeff, Jack has this little sixth sense of where Kent is on ice, but Kent’s is more just like a gut feeling. When Jack has the puck, where Jack is in the locker room - he feels it in his chest, despite how little time they spend interacting face to face. 

But he knows next to nothing about Jack’s boyfriend, nothing other than a name (Eric), a nickname and an descriptor, both supplied by Mashkov (Bitty the Baker) and the fact that their relationship is apparently serious enough for Jack to consider coming out, something that Kent has honestly been dwelling on ever since Jack let it slip in the car. 

Kent pulls out his phone the next time he has the chance, before he goes to take his pregame nap. It doesn’t take long to click over to Jack’s profile, scroll through his followers, find the picture of the blond guy he vaguely remembers from Samwell. His feed is mostly pictures of pies and tarts, interspersed with hockey retweets and chirps at his own teammates, the Samwell Men’s Hockey team. Kent has to laugh, even though it doesn’t feel particularly funny, because of course Jack would be dating another hockey player, even a college one. He just doesn’t know any better. 

@omgcheckplease: excited to see the game tonight! Go @ProvidenceFalconers! 

So he’ll be at the game tonight. All right then. Kent knows that it’s a bad idea, knows that it absolutely make Jack furious when he inevitably finds out about it, paltry internet presence or no, but he can’t help it. The kid is funny, and those pies look delicious. He follows @omgcheckplease, throws his phone on the charger, double checks that his alarm is set, and rolls over to take his pre-game nap. 

@omgcheckplease is now following you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mashkov makes a friend. I do love Jack too, I promise! His story is coming. 
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone that has read and left comments! It makes me so happy.


	4. One Step, Two Steps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More serious conversations, this time with the right people.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See endnotes for warnings.

He doesn’t think about it again until he’s already at the rink. They’re up against the Aeros tonight, and he’s trying to focus as much as he can on thinking through their plays. The Aeros have a rep for physicality this season, matched by the Aces if he’s being honest, but it’s a home game, which is nice. 

The Falconers might be a newer team, but hockey runs deep in this part of the country, and the fans are always excited for home games. Not like the Aces, where he’s pretty sure half the seats were filled free tickets, giveaways to tourists coming from the casinos, almost every time. 

The Falconers win the face-off, and the game becomes a blur after that. 

There’s a goal scored in the first, no thanks to Jack. It’s Rusty’s assist on Kent’s goal, and they bump helmets in a celly.Jack looks pissed about it, which pisses Kent off, but he doesn’t say anything, just keeps skating. The Aeros score one in soon after, slamming it in out of Snowy’s reach. 

It’s still early yet though, the Falcs can still tie this up, make it happen. 

Jack gives a short speech of encouragement between periods but it feels slightly stilted and off, like Jack doesn’t quite believe the words he’s saying. When Kent looks around though, everyone is nodding seriously, so maybe it’s just Kent, picking up on something in the air. 

The second period is a mess. The Aeros get in two more goals, one after the other, and Kent is straining now, every shift a desperate struggle to regain the puck, to line it up. 

There’s a desperate, aching moment when Jack gets the puck, swerves out of the defense zone where the Aeros have been keeping him. A wild second, when Kent knows Jack is deciding who to pass to. Kent is ready, he’s free, has as a clean shot as they’re going to get —

Jack slides it over to Rusty instead, and they lose it, intercepted in moments 

Mashkov drop his gloves with five minutes left to go in the period, but Kent is too far away to hear what’s been said, just knows it must have been pretty bad. Kent frowns. Mashkov can’t afford for his penalty minutes to go much higher, not at this point in the game. There are murmurs going up and down the bench, but no one seems to know what was said, and neither of them was mic’d up, so they just watch him skate to the Penalty Bench. 

Coach isn’t happy, but no one is right now, just grim and determined. Mashkov has a puffy lip, but doesn’t seem to care or notice, just claps a giant hand on Jack’s back as they turn to take the ice again. 

Jack, who is quiet and pale. Jack who didn’t pass, even though Kent knows he saw him. 

The second period might have been a mess, but the third period is brutal. It’s as much as any of them can do to keep the Aeros from scoring again, let alone even the score. 

Kent is skating up to crease when he gets a nasty slash from an Aeros grinder. It leaves him wincing, but he’s not leaving the ice, not now. He accepts a new stick, waits for the ref to finish calling the penalty. 

It doesn’t matter anyway. The Falconers are too far behind, too fragmented to surge back. 

Kent bites back the urge to yell at Jack, tell him to get it together, tell him to pass the puck. It won’t fix anything, not this late in the game, and the last thing they need is the media getting wind of their problems, making it a weakness other times can exploit. 

He almost wishes he had when the Aeros score their fourth goal of the night, coming in at the end of the third, with what Kent considers an obnoxious celly, even by his standards. 

The game ends 4-1. 

They skate off the ice in silence instead. The locker room atmosphere is icy, quiet apart from a few interviews going on, the guys shaking off the microphones as soon as possible. No one likes to lose, but they all know it’s part of the game. You win some, you lose some, right? But they were evenly matched against the Aeros, maybe even had the edge, and they didn’t even put up a fight, not enough of one anyway. It doesn’t sit right. 

Kent only catches a few muttered grumbles, some guys talking about consolation drinks beforehe heads out. No one wants to get consolation drinks with _him,_ and he needs to be on his own to lick his wounds. Maybe Jeff will still be awake.

***

Kent is already back at his apartment before he checks his phone, ready to tell his mom she doesn’t have anything to worry about, maybe log onto Twitter and say something snarky. He definitely isn’t expecting to see DMs from Jack’s boy, nearly spits out his gatorade when he realizes that Eric Bittle following him back was real and not just a deep nap dream. 

Direct Messages between @therealkentparson and @omgcheckplease

@omgcheckplease: good game tonight 

@omgcheckplease: that looked nasty in the third though 

@omgcheckplease: you ok?

Kent stares at his phone for a minute, completely at a loss for what to respond. 

@therealkentparson: yeah

@therealkentparson: thanks 

@omgcheckplease: take care of yourself Kent 

***

More direct messages between @therealkentparson and @omgcheckplease

@omgcheckplease: good luck tonight 

@therealkentparson: thanks 

@omgcheckplease: did you see this article 

@omcheckplease: deadspin.com/article23404750

@omgcheckplese: they rank you #2 for mic’d up chirps 

@therealkentparson: surely I deserve number 1 

***

@omgcheckplease: rough show tonight 

@omgcheckplease: nice slapshot though 

@omgcheckplease: you’ll get em next time 

@therealkentparson: thanks. hope so.

Kent doesn’t know what in the world he’s thinking, DMing like this with Jack’s boyfriend. Never mind that Bittle is always the one that reaches out first, and he’s just responding. It just feels wrong somehow. Bittle is just so damn friendly though. He retweets Kent’s posts, and once even added a heart eyes emoji to a picture Kent posted of Kit. Usually he tries to keep that stuff just to her Instagram, but it had been too cute not to, and Bittle had liked it within minutes. 

He wonders if Jack knows, that him and Bittle DM on the regular like this, usually just before or after games, but quickly decides that he there’s simply no way. 

Jack would definitely not be happy. 

***

Kent is sitting at home one night, thumbing through Kit’s fur. She’s getting a little bald spot on her side, and he’s worried that she’s licking it too much. Google says that maybe she’s anxious? Which makes sense, considering he did just move her across the country. Google also says that she could be picking up on her owner’s anxiety. But Kent’s not anxious. He’s just a little on edge, so that doesn’t make any sense.

“Do you think I’m anxious?” he asks her, peering down at her little face. 

Kit doesn’t answer, just bats at his leg with a lazy paw, which he takes as a sign to keep petting her, although he carefully avoids the bald spot. 

The doorbell rings, loudly and unexpectedly. Kent isn’t expecting anyone over, and he didn’t order any food or anything like that, so he gets up warily, moving Kit off his lap and onto the couch. 

Maybe it’s one of the neighbors with a noise complaint or something. Kent can get a little vocal when he plays NHL on the Xbox. Not his fault the stats aren’t accurate. He really should write them an email or something. 

He looks through the little peephole, and takes a step backward in shock. 

Mashkov is standing there, a serious look on his face. 

The doorbell rings again. 

Kent opens the door before Mashkov can take his hand off the buzzer. Mashkov is really there, in his hallway, all six and a half feet of him. 

“What are you doing here?”, Kent hisses wildly. The other option is yelling wildly, and he really doesn’t want that noise complaint this early in his lease. 

Instead of actually answering, Mashkov takes his hand casually off the buzzer, straightens up, and gestures down the hallway. 

“Come with me”. 

“What?” Kent blurts out, still so shocked by the sight of him that he automatically moves to comply, before realizing what he’s doing. He has to forcibly plant his feet, determined to get some answers before he goes anywhere with his teammate, who is apparently, completely crazy. 

Mashkov’s eyes are crinkled at the corners, like he expected Kent to act exactly like this and now he’s laughing at him. Which, whatever. It’s not every day he has a 250 pound d-man show up at his door. 

“What are you doing here? How do you even know where I live?” 

“Snowy”, Mashkov says, as if that explains everything. And yeah, that checks out actually. He gave Snowy his address and cat sitter’s number in case he ever got injured on the road or something. Damn that goalie. If he wasn’t quite so good at his job, Kent would have a whole lot of words to say to him. 

Besides that doesn’t answer his next question in the slightest. 

“How did you get into the building?” 

To this, Mashkov just gives a secretive smile. 

“Come on, I explain on the road”. 

Kent is about to say no, about to make Mashkov explain himself ( _properly_ ) before he takes a single step out of his apartment, but it’s not exactly like he was doing anything anyway, and whatever it is probably beats talking to his cat. Plus, he figures he owes Mashkov one (or several, his mind supplies unhelpfully), in the scheme of things, so he grabs his jacket and keys and follows Mashkov down the hallway, to the elevator bank, out to where Mashkov’s car, a large black monstrosity is illegally parked outside his building. 

Kent is about to point this out, say something snarky, but Mashkov just gestures at the passenger side of the car, and Kent obediently gets in, like somewhere along the way he agreed to obey every wacky ass order this guy came up with as an apology for years of hating on the guy. 

Tater doesn’t talk again until the car is started and he’s pulling out of his illegal spot, with scarcely a glance in the rearview mirrors. 

“You have a license right?” Kent asks. He hopes that’s not offensive, but seriously. Kent cannot afford to get pulled over right now. 

“Of course,” Mashkov smirks. Which, totally not reassuring at all. 

“Did you have to bribe anyone to get it?”

Mashkov just laughs and keeps driving. 

All right then.

***

It takes only a few minutes before they’re pulling up in front a small house that Kent has never seen before. It looks nice though, a wooden porch and some small pots of flowers lining the short steps up to the front door. 

They’re in a more suburban feeling neighborhood than where Kent lives. The houses have driveways, and nice yards, and Kent makes a mental note to check this place out if maybe the Falcs offer him another contract when this one is up. Who knows though, with the way their games have been going lately, the way he’s been playing. 

The door opens, and a figure silhouetted by light takes a half step out onto the porch. 

“Hi Tater. Thanks for picking him up. Kent honey, you better come in”. 

And there it is again. For the third time in a matter of weeks, Kent is flabbergasted. Shocked. Absolutely astronomically astounded, more so than he’s ever been in his life. 

This is Bittle’s house? 

Jack appears behind Bittle, scowl fixed in place as usual. 

Ah. This is Jack’s house. That actually makes a lot more sense. Kent remembers that Bittle must be a student still, still at Samwell, but it’s the weekend, so he must have come up for the weekend. Or down, Kent can’t really remember where Samwell is in relation to Providence for some reason. Whatever, he’ll look it up later. 

“What is this? Some kind of intervention?” 

He meant it as a joke, but it falls oddly flat, words disappearing into the night. 

Bittle ( _he really does kinda look like a smaller version of Kent,_ he thinks hysterically), just bites his lip, and gestures inside. 

“Come inside. Both of you”

Kent’s body, the body he has spent the past 20 years of his life training and honing, betrays him. His mind is screaming, telling him to get back in the car, or even better, just start running. His body hears the gentle command in Bittle’s voice, and takes a step forward. 

Up the porch steps, into the entryway. Jack is now skulking down a short hallway, still scowling, but Bittle is still right there, smiling a tentative welcome. 

Kent takes the final step inside. Mashkov moves up behind him, as if he knows exactly what Kent was thinking and is going to make it his life mission to stop Kent from running. Great, just great. 

There’s a wooden shoe rack just inside the door. Kent goes to open his mouth, to ask whether he should take his shoes off. Then, he thinks, still little hysterically, if they’re going to murder him and chop him into little pieces, maybe he better leave his shoes on. Still, his mom didn’t raise him to be rude, so he asks anyway. 

“Do you want me to take my shoes off?” 

Bittle looks surprised. 

“Sure, if you want”. 

Great, so apparently Bittle expects so little from him that even the most basic decency is a shock. Kent guesses he deserves that. All that Bittle knows about him is the horrific conversation with Jack he overheard at Samwell, and whatever Jack has told him about Kent over the years, which Kent doesn’t expect is great. 

Kent slips his sneakers off, and then just stands there, in socked feet, waiting for someone to tell him what’s going on. 

All the other surprises have nothing on this one though. Because just as Kent is about to open his mouth and ask what it is he’s doing here, Bittle reaches out and tugs Kent into a hug. 

It’s brief, just a few seconds. But it’s enough to make Kent’s brain short circuit again, just when he was starting to get it together a little. Before he can stop it, Kent’s being ushered out of the entryway, and down a hallway with honey-colored wood to the back of the house, into a brightly-lit kitchen. 

***

It really is an intervention, apparently. 

Tater, arms crossed against his gargantuan chest looks smug. Bittle looks like a doll next to his massive frame, except the expression on Bittle’s face is less smug, more worried. 

Jack, meanwhile, looks furious. Jack’s facial expressions usually take some degree of interpretation, he’s usually so reserved, but Kent knows this one like the back of his hand. It’s written on his heart, etched in shame and guilt and bad decisions that stretch from Samwell to Las Vegas. It’s odd, but knowing that him and Jack are somewhat on the same page with how monumentally bad of an idea this is, is somewhat comforting. 

So far, neither Kent nor Jack have responded to Bittle’s earnest, seemingly well-rehearsed speech. 

When Bittle speaks next, it’s a direct appeal to Jack, who is standing at the edge of the kitchen like he doesn’t belong here, like this isn’t his house they’re all in. 

“Jack, you haven’t slept a single night all the way through since Kent got traded”. 

Jack’s expression tightens a little more, so Kent knows it must be true. Kent is surprised despite himself. Yeah, he knew Jack was a little on the edge. And judging by the team, the tight little looks they would shoot Jack after games, in the locker room, they knew it too. But Jack has always been so focused, so intense about hockey, Kent didn’t think he had the capacity to affect Jack like that anymore.

Bittle turns to Kent, “And Kent, I don’t know you very well, but I think you’re struggling too”. 

Kent opens his mouth, ready to shoot off something rude and caustic, before swallowing it back bitterly. This is Bittle’s home, he can keep it together for a few more seconds if it kills him. 

“It’s not his fault,” Kent says finally instead. “I’m not fitting with the team”. It’s an understatement, but he thinks Bittle will understand team dynamics, if he phrases it like that. He knows Bittle is on a team himself. A team him and Jack shared

Bittle snorts, and it’s pretty unexpected coming from his sweet face. 

“And they’re not giving you the chance you deserve, and you know it”. 

Kent wants to protest, tell Bittle it’s not like that, but the words don’t come out. He feels unexpectedly vulnerable in this bright kitchen. 

Bittle keeps going. 

“You’re a nice guy, Kent. You deserve the chance to explain yourself”. 

And really, how the fuck does Bittle know that? 

Bittle’s voice turns to pleading. 

“You don’t have to be friends. No one is asking that of you. But hockey is too important to you to let it go like this”. He turns a half step towards Kent. “To both of you”. 

Kent knows that him and Jack aren’t exactly friends anymore, knows that they haven’t been friends for a very long time. But it’s still different to hear it from Bittle, this boy who looks so much like himself, and yet is so very different. For starters, Kent cannot imagine inviting his boyfriend’s ex-boyfriend to his boyfriend’s house to plead with the both of them to work it out. But maybe that’s just him. 

“You play good hockey,”Tater says, when the silence has stretched on for several long moments. Up until now, he has not said a word, just stood in the doorway with arms still crossed like some kind of giant kitchen statue. “But can play better if talk”. 

Kent looks at Jack again, only this time, Jack is actually looking back at him, and the angry, tight expression has turned more to one of resignation. 

“Okay,” Jack says, voice measured and controlled. “Let’s talk”. 

Kent knows that it was Tater’s argument and not Bittle’s that really cinched it for Jack, because that’s what’s calling him the hardest. Both of them might be idiots, but they’re not idiots when it comes to hockey, and the thought of playing hockey, _really playing_ , not what they’ve been doing the last few weeks with his speed and Jack’s power, is dizzying. 

“Can I get you a drink Kent?” Bittle offers. “Maybe y’all could use one”. 

Kent thinks about saying yes, about just taking it, but — “No, I don’t uh…do that anymore”. 

He’d faked it for a long time, at Vegas clubs and Aces cook-outs. Drinking coke out of a highball glass, pouring water into a shot glass. Swoops was the only one who really knew, although basically anyone who’d been Kent’s rookie knew that Kent could always be relied on to get them safely home, that if they ever needed a designated driver, to call him and he would come. 

Jack clears his throat. “Because of me?” 

Christ. Kent looks up at Jack, startled. “Jesus, Zimms. Don’t you want to ease in or something?” 

Jack just looks at him, long and steady. 

_“I don’t think either of us are really capable of easing in at this point, do you?”_

He’s speaking French, the asshole. Kent’s French is actually better than he lets on, he had a billet sister in Rimouski that took it as her personal mission to drill verb tenses into his skull, but that doesn’t mean he wants to whip it out here and now. While he’s about to have fucking heart to heart in front of Tater and Bittle. 

Still though. Jack may have a point about the easing in. Kent is perfectly capable of admitting that they’ve both hurt each other, both said things (or didn’t say things) to intentionally wound. Maybe it is just better to rip the band-aid off. 

“ _I guess not”_ Kent replies carefully. 

Kent has actually thought a fucking lot about this moment over the years. About what he would say to Jack, about what Jack would say back. Somehow, in half-spun fantasies and daydreams, even in nightmares, it’s never seemed like a real possibility, that he and Jack would ever get to the point of having an actual conversation about it, and now that it’s here, he’s panicking, terrified that he’s going to say the wrong thing and this is all going to blow right back up in his face. 

“Why don’t you boys go into the den”, Bittle interrupts, “and I’ll have a pie out for you when you’re done”. 

Kent panics a little at this. Not at the pie, but being alone with Jack. He feels like he needs a witness, feels like he needs someone on his side, someone to hold him back from saying as many hurtful things as he can and running away from the fire. 

Kent stops panicking quite as much when he realizes that Tater is improbably included in “you boys”, despite the fact that he’s about a foot taller and a good hundred pounds on Bittle, and it’s all three of them being ushered out of the kitchen to the den. 

***

The conversation is excruciating. Kent is trying so hard to pull it together, to be emotionally mature about this, but it feels like he’s being asked to read something for the first time with only a vague understanding of what letters are. 

Somehow, knowing that Bittle is on the other side of the house, baking a pie or whatever the heck he’s doing makes it easier. Stops him from wanting to push Jack up against a wall and kiss him, or worse, shout mean things at him until he gets a response. 

Kent takes a deep breath, and says the next thing he knows he needs to say. 

“I’m sorry for not being respectful of your space. I’m sorry for pushing so hard when you were still in recovery”. 

It’s excruciating, but Kent does feel better once he’s said it, once the words are out there in the open. 

“I’m still in recovery”, Jack says. “I mean, I’ll always be in recovery”. 

It’s a statement, but feels like it needs acknowledgement, so Kent nods. That makes sense to him. Just because he hasn’t had a drink for five years doesn’t mean he would be fine if he went and had a bunch tomorrow. Kent thinks about saying this, telling Jack about why he stopped drinking, but Jack is still talking, so he doesn’t. 

“I’m sorry too Kenny. I’m sorry that I left you on your own when I knew you relied on my as much as I relied on you. I’m sorry for not making sure you got help you needed

“You weren’t responsible —” 

Jack keeps talking. “I’m sorry I cut you out of my life so cruelly, and that I made you think I didn’t want to be friends. I wanted it so badly, I just didn’t know how, not without comparing myself to you, and I couldn’t do that anymore”. 

Jesus, this is a lot. 

This time it’s Kent that switches to French, because it gives him time to think about his words, make sure that he’s being deliberate about what he’s going to say, that he doesn’t just lash out because he doesn’t know what else to do. 

“ _Why did you? Why did you cut me out, I mean? I know that I pushed too hard, especially about joining the league, but was I that bad for you? Bad enough for you to overdose_?”

“ _I was sick_. _I wasn’t treating it right and it got out of control. You were doing the best you could, and I held it together for a lot longer because of you, but you aren’t a doctor Kent. Sometimes, you just need a doctor_ ”. 

The analogy makes sense, but it’s hard for Kent to swallow all the same. He spent so much time trying to take care of Jack, trying to take care of both of them. It’s hard to realize he wasn’t doing the right thing, when he had been so sure at the time that he was. 

But they were just kids. And if Kent is going to forgive Jack, he has to forgive himself too. 

Okay. It’s Kent’s turn again. 

“I understand if you don’t want to be friends, not anymore but at least we can play together—” 

“I do. I want us to be friends” 

Kent can feel his eyes welling up with tears at this, can do absolutely nothing to stop them. He feels Tater move up behind him, put his hands on Kent’s shoulders, and Kent leans into the solidity of the touch, for once not questioning it. 

_“I think we can make it work”._ Jack says simply. “ _I think we’re different people now, and the people that we are can be friends_. _It’s not going to be easy, but it’s worth a try_ ”. 

Kent nods once, nods again, and the tears come splashing out. 

“Okay”. 

It’s not perfect, obviously. There’s still more they need to talk about, more they both have to apologize for, but it’s a start. 

It’s a start. 

***

Bittle appears in the doorway. He’s wearing an apron with some splotchy purple stains and one hand is encased in an oven mitt. 

“Are you boys ready for pie?” 

Kent takes a deep breath. He didn’t even notice, but the house smells delicious, fruity and sweet and comforting. 

They follow Bittle into the kitchen. Tater goes first, and the contrast in their heights makes Kent smile, helps him recollect himself a little before moving to follow, even though he knows his eyes are probably all red and his face is definitely pink and splotchy. 

Jack puts a big hand on Kent’s shoulder, squeezing for just a minute before letting go. 

“Are we good Kenny?” 

Kent lets himself just look at him for a second. This is Zimms. Not the boy he had once fallen in love with, or the man he had built up to hate in his head. Kent is under no delusions here, not anymore. They’re going to have to work for it, and it’s not going to be easy. But Kent doesn’t hesitate, not anymore. 

“Yeah. We’re good Zimms”. 

Jack smiles, small but genuine. 

“Good”. 

The mood lightens in the kitchen. The kitchen is big and warm and homey, and Kent’s heart aches for the life that Jack has managed to build, against all odds. 

“More pie?” Bittle offers, already reaching for Kent’s empty plate. 

Kent nods. 

***

“Goodnight Bittle. Thanks for, you know, this” He waves a hand expansively around the entryway, hoping it will convey the actual depth of his emotions, how grateful he is, and not just sound flippant and facetious. Like Vegas Kent. 

The kid laughs, sticks out a hand for Kent to shake, and then somehow manages to pull Kent in for another hug instead when he takes it. He smells like pie, and soap, and he’s actually only a few inches shorter than Kent, so he notches perfectly on Kent’s shoulder. 

“Call me Eric. Or Bitty. Whichever.” 

Jack doesn’t even hesitate, just pulls Kent straight in for a hug as soon as Bitty releases him. It feels familiar, and safe. A little different too, Kent’s probably grown half an inch since the last time they hugged as teenagers, even though Jack is still has a good six inches on him. Asshole. Jack lets him go after a few, turning towards Tater with an outstretched fist. 

“You leaving too Tater?” 

Mashkov smiles, “Someone’s gotta make sure Parsley gets home safe”. 

Kent feels worn out on the way home, like he’s just played two hockey games back to back in the middle of playoffs. He definitely needs to eat more protein. 

The roads are damp and icy and Tater is driving slowly. There aren’t many cars on the road this time of night. 

Kent realizes he probably owes Tater a thank you as well, for kidnapping him the first place. 

“Mashkov —” 

Tater interrupts him before he can even get the words out. 

“You call Zimmboni, Zimms. Bitty, Eric. I think is time you call me Alexei, yes?” 

Kent glances over at him. Tater is drives with perfect posture, seat back perfectly straight. _Just like Jack_ , Kent thinks for a moment, and the thought doesn’t even send him spiraling the way it might have just a few hours ago. 

“Only if you call me Kent”. 

“No promises, Parsley”. 

The ridiculous nickname makes Kent smile, then grimace. 

“I’m not going to let my Falcs nickname be Parsley, _Tater_ ”. Theoretically, it could be worse. There had been a brief, awful week when some of the Aces vets had tried to call him _Kenzie._ Kent had shut that down real quick, but he’s definitely not going to give the Falcs any ideas. 

“We’ll see about that”, Alexei says with certainty. 

Kent just snorts. 

Alexei drops him off at his door. 

His massive black car is high enough that Kent has to look where he’s going as he steps down, which, fuck that. He’s not even that short. When he makes it to the ground and looks back up, Alexei is smiling warmly at him. 

“See, not so bad. You trust me. I make all better”. It’s said sincerely, but Kent has just about met his quota for emotional conversations tonight, and can’t even muster the thank you Alexei probably deserves. 

So Kent smiles again, and waves a goodbye. 

Kit mewls at the door, upset at him for leaving her before, but happy enough to accept his snuggles as compensation. God, he loves this cat. 

Kent barely has it in him to brush his teeth, change into pajamas, before passing out on the bed, Kit Purrson kneading his upper arm before curling up in a ball in the crook of his elbow. 

_That really wasn’t so bad_ , he thinks. _Or at least, it could have been worse_. 

He can do this. One game at a time. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for (brief) discussion of Jack’s overdose. 
> 
> When Kent and Jack are speaking in French, it appears in italics. 
> 
> This chapter was the second part of chapter 3 and it got split up, yet is still crazy long. Sorry!


	5. Boston

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're back in the game.

The first time the Zimmerman-Parson No-Look One-Timer happens in a game is pretty extraordinary. 

Kent knows that him and Jack have been playing adequate hockey the last few games, but it hasn’t been up to their potential, and everyone knows it. This is the big leagues, and they don’t get paid to play just adequately. Tonight is different. 

Even the locker room feels different before the game. It’s a little lighter, a little warmer. Kent doesn’t think that Jack would have said anything to anyone that would difference, but maybe the Falcs are just better at intuiting Jack’s moods than Kent ever was, because there’s more laughter, more chirping before they take the ice than he can remember. It’s nice. 

Snowy glides onto the ice first, as usual. Goalie first, and all that. Jack follows next, and Kent takes a deep breath before he steps out as well. 

Everyone takes a couple loops. The Falcs go over to tap Snowy’s pads, and then it’s just the starters on ice. 

The puck drops. Kent wins the face-off, lets a smirk spread across his face, and the game begins. 

Maybe it’s because they’re all a little too keyed up, a little too excited, but the first period is disastrous. Sloppy and loose, and not even adequate, if Kent is being honest. 

To that effect, the Bruins score twice in the first period, slamming the second goal in with seconds to spare on the clock. TD Garden is full of fans wearing Bruins black and yellow, and they rise as one each time to cheer. The Bruins goal horn is loud and obnoxious, and makes Kent’s determination rise in his chest, even as he skates back to bench. 

Jack doesn’t say anything to the team before they skate again. He doesn’t need to. Just looks around at the team, making eye contact with one Falc after another. Kent is last, and when they lock eyes, Kent feels the familiar jolt of intensity from when they were just two kids, trying to make it to the league. 

They’re two goals down, but they’re still in it. 

The team skates back out to jeers and shouts. Jesus, but Boston fans are fucking brutal. He knows there must be some Falconers fans mixed in, it’s not like Providence is hours away, but if there are, Kent can’t hear them over this cacophony. 

They take a shift, and then back to the bench. The Bruins have a reputation for tight defense this year, but they aren’t as fast as they could be, and if Kent could just get back out there, get the puck back — 

Jack punches his shoulder lightly, and Kent looks to his right. Jack isn’t even looking at him, still staring straight out at the ice, but Kent knows exactly what he means. Jack will get the puck, Kent will handle the rest. Just like old times. 

Coach calls their line up, and Kent is off, flying across the ice, just focused on getting to where he needs to be. 

Jack is already there, fighting for the puck. He steals it from a Bruin, #37, on a loose pass, and in one beautiful clean motion, lines it up, passes it over to where Kent is waiting, unnoticed. Kent slaps it in. 

Goal.

Hockey isn’t usually that simple, but sometimes it is, and in those moments, like now, it’s beautiful. They haven’t had time to work it out in practice yet, so this is just based on instinct, instinct and the hundreds of times they had practiced this in Juniors until they could do it without looking, without breathing if necessary. 

There are enough Providence fans in the stands that Kent hears finally hears a cheer go up, and smiles under his helmet. Jack is too far away for a celly, but Rusty is right there and they bump fists before Coach calls the next line out. 

They’re all breathing hard, but Kent manages to make eye contact with Jack while the second line skates out.

“Again?” Kent mouths. He tries not to make it too obvious. It’s not exactly a secret, this move of theirs, there had certainly been enough attention on it in the Q. Even so, Kent bets there are cameras on them right now, and he doesn’t want this to be a clip they show later. Keep them speculating, for as long as possible. 

Jack just nods, before fixing his gaze back on the ice. Typical. 

Their first goal might have been extraordinary, but the second NHL Zimmerman-Parson No-Look One-Timer is one for the record-books. Kent physically can’t even look as he shoots the puck in, just aims on a wing and a prayer. He had to twist to intercept the puck from where Jack had sent it, and he’s practically skating backwards as it is. 

He feels his stick connect, feels the puck zoom off and —

The Providence fans are cheering louder now, loud enough to drown out the worst of the stadium’s boos. There’s no goal horn for them, not in this barn, but Kent doesn’t need one.   
This time, Jack is right there, skating up to him on the ice and they crash into each other for a celly that leaves Kent breathless. 

And just like that, the Falconers are back in the game. 

The Bruins have caught on to them slightly in the third period, because Kent is flanked up the ice every time he takes a shift. He thinks he could still make it, if Jack gets him the puck, but eventually the game-winner is scored by Davey, left-winger on the Falcs’ second line. 

The Bruins don’t stop fighting until the final second, and Kent wouldn’t want them to. 

But still. It’s a helluva win. 

*** 

@omgcheckplease: congrats!!!!!!!! @ProvidenceFalconers

@deadspin: @ProvidenceFalconers win over @NHLBruins 3-2. Read our breakdown of the game [link]. 

@espn: Clip from tonight’s game. @therealkentparson crushes the second of @ProvidenceFalconers three goals. 

***

Kent and Jack are both pulled to do post-game interviews. Even after all these years, Kent isn’t quite used to having a microphone shoved in his face after a game. It always makes him jumpy, and it tends to show a little on his face, no matter how many sessions of press training he sits through with PR. He likes talking to people, but not like this, when it always feels like he’s about to say the wrong thing. 

Weirdly, Jack is pretty good at pressers, which is not how Kent would have predicted this going if you had asked him when he was 17. Fans love to call Jack a hockey robot, which is completely fair, but somehow he makes it work off the ice too. Jack can put up a wall now, between himself and the microphone, while Kent tends to take hie emotion from the ice. Jack seems calm and collected now, although Kent knows under his undisturbed exterior, Jack is just as excited about their goals as he is. 

Kent could have predicted the first question coming from a mile away. 

“There was lots of speculation about the two of you playing on the same team. How did that game feel?”

The reporter is a guy with beady eyes and little wire-framed glasses. Kent gets distracted for a minute, thinking about how it really did feel, instead of just spitting out a media-ready answer like he’s been taught. 

It felt good, really good. Better than good. It felt inevitable, like him and Zimms were finally where they were supposed to be, and nothing could stop by now. Somehow though, he doesn’t think that’s the answer the guy wants. Or maybe he would like it a little too much, and the story would end up being something different entirely. 

Jack cuts in before Kent can hesitate for too long, make himself look like a goon. Kent is relieved anyway. He’s not sure he’s really earned the right to talk about him and Jack playing together, even if him and Jack have talked it out, even if that game was one of the best he’s probably played in the whole show. 

“It felt good”. Kent feels Jack look at him sideways. “Kent is a talented player, and fits really well on the line and on the team. The Falcs are lucky to have him”. 

“So do you think we’ll be seeing more performances like that from the two of you?” 

“I sure hope so”. Jack looks the reporter dead in the eyes. “Don’t you?”

The guy laughs, a little uncomfortably. Jack’s just put him on the spot, and Kent is pretty sure the guy is from one of the bigger networks, which means he definitely should not be expressing a public preference for a team or a player. 

It takes a little pressure off of Kent for his next few questions, and then he’s thankfully released from the spotlight. 

Jack is still answering questions, and Kent can tell that a couple of them are about him, but Jack just keeps answering evenly, throwing it back every time to Kent’s skill, and how well he meshes with the team. 

Kent’s not blushing exactly, but he’s pretty sure that if he weren’t already flushed from the game, he would be. He’s pretty sure this is the most verbose Jack’s been about his hockey skills since they spent Christmas with Bad Bob, Jack earnestly explaining over pancakes why Kent was a good practice partner. 

It had made Kent kinda embarrassed then, talking about hockey in front of his childhood hero, and about his hockey no less. 

Kent is embarrassed now too, but there’s also a part of him that wants Jack to keep talking, keep saying nice things in front of all these people. 

***

Coach pulls them both aside when before they leave. 

“If you guys can make that work on the regular —” 

Coach trails off. There’s a far away, misty look in his eyes. He doesn’t finish the sentence either, as if scared to jinx it just by vocalizing the thing they’re all thinking, just clears his throat gruffly instead and claps a hand on both their backs. The guy might be in his 50s, but he’s in pretty good shape still, and Kent winces a little as the hand hits a bruise he picked up a few games ago. 

“Good work boys”. 

He doesn’t say anything else, just strides off, whistling a tune that Kent is almost certain is a song from Moana, and before turning a corner in the hallway and disappearing out of sight. 

And then it’s just him and Jack standing in the hallway outside the locker room. Kent can still hear the sounds of riotous laughter coming from within. There’s a rap song playing obnoxiously loud and someone - Rusty, Kent thinks - is scream-singing along to loud groans and jeers. 

Kent clears his throat. He still doesn’t know how to act around this version of Jack, this version that he thinks he’s allowed to be friends with, only he’s not sure how because they haven’t been friends since they were 17, and so much has changed. 

“Nice to know we still got it right?”, he says with a smirk, trying to deflect from any emotions he might be feeling. Deflect and distract. It doesn’t work as well as Kent hoped, because even to him, it hits home a little hard. Tonight’s game was the culmination of so many years of work, so many turns in the road that brought them to this moment. 

“We never stopped”, Jack says, softly, and Kent knows that they’re both thinking again of what could have been. Just for a second. 

Then it’s Jack clapping a hand on his back, making him wince, before he too turns and leaves. 

“Early practice tomorrow, yeah Kenny?”, he tosses behind him.

Jack doesn’t wait for an answer, just keeps walking until he turns the corner and is out of sight. 

Fucker. 

Kent lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, like some kind of cliche from a teen romance novel. Jack leaving doesn’t sting, at least not nearly as much as it would have just a few days ago. Jack has his own life now, a person to go home to, a person to call after every game. A person that isn’t Kent. Once upon a time, Jack would have been begging Kent to get back on the ice, even after a game like that, so they could practice more and more. 

Kent is happy that Jack has changed, doesn’t resent him for wanting to get home. Especially   
not after meeting Eric Bittle properly, seeing the love and patience and care that the two of them had poured into their relationship. He’s not the right person for Jack anymore, and Jack’s not the person for him and he knows that. 

It’s just. He still feels lonely, coming down from that combination of exhilaration and exhaustion, of a game hard played and hard won. 

But it’s fine. He’s a big kid now, not an 18 year old rookie that went first in the draft and has to go back to his hotel room and drink his feelings every time. He can deal with being alone after a game. No problem. 

He turns to go, before hearing the rush of voices and sound that means the locker room door has opened, then the silence as it swings shut again. 

A deep voice, Alexei, his mind automatically supplies, asks —

“Wanna get a drink?” 

When Kent looks up in confusion - hadn’t Tater been there for that part of the conversation - Tater is smiling at him. Kent remembers that, oh yeah, he hadn’t really explained that part that well, and they might have been talking in French at that point anyway, who even knows. 

“Sure”, Kent says steadily. “But I don’t really drink actually. Alcohol anyway. Wanna grab some food instead?” 

And the world doesn’t end. Alexei doesn’t immediately start chirping him, call him a pussy for not drinking alcohol like a real man. Just smiles and says okay, says he knows a good place for fries, best fries in Boston.   
He has a nice smile, friendly and warm. Surely there’s no way all of his front teeth are real? Kent’s aren’t, at least not most of them, and he actually can’t remember anymore which ones are which, not without thinking about it really hard. 

Alexei is already moving down the hall, about to disappear around the same corner as Jack, before he stops, looking back, a worried expression on his face. 

“You like potatoes? If not, we go somewhere else”. 

“I like potatoes just fine Tater,” Kent manages. 

“Good”. The smile returns in full force, and Alexei turns the corner. 

Kent follows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter today, but more is coming very, very soon! Thank you so much to everyone that has taken the time to read, it really makes my day.


	6. Home Fries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are looking up. For the Falcs, at least.

The fries are good. So is the baked potato that Alexei orders, with sour cream and bacon bits on top, and the tater tots that Kent demands they get on the side. 

When Alexei said he knew a good place for fries, Kent can honestly say he did not think it would be this. 

They’re at a little 24-hour diner in the suburbs, where Alexei claims he has tried every variety of potato on the menu. Kent had been skeptical when they had pulled up in their Uber. The neon sign was blinking out, and there were only a few cars scattered in a parking lot that seemed far, far too large. 

There are many varieties of potatoes on the menu. Kent tries to count for a few minutes, but he keeps losing track when Alexei tugs the thing away, and eventually just gives up, lets Tater take the wheel. 

When the first potato dish arrives at the table, Tater digs in with an excitement Kent thinks rivals what he probably felt winning the Stanley Cup. 

“So is this where you got your nickname? Eating lots of potatoes?” 

“No, I get my nickname from something else. But I’m not wanting to tell you the story”. 

Kent just looks at him, steals a tot off the edge of the plate, and waits. 

So Alexei tells him, over three types of potatoes and root beer floats, the story of how he got his nickname. 

It’s a funny story, involving a roadie to Arizona, a swimming pool, and an ill-advised game of strip-poker. 

Kent nearly falls out of the booth laughing when Alexei describes running away from a hotel security guard while Snowy eggs him on. 

And then looses it altogether when Alexei just finishes with, “So that’s why they call me Tater”, as if that wasn’t the craziest nickname origin story Kent’s ever heard in all his years playing professional hockey. 

They manage to get it together after a few minutes of breathless laughter. 

Alexei smiles and goes back to his food, while Kent loses himself in his own plate of tots and contemplates ordering another root beer float, meal plan be damned. 

When he looks back up, Alexei is looking at him more seriously. 

“I want to ask you a question”. 

Kent straightens up automatically. He likes Alexei a lot, thinks they’re on the way to being good friends, if they aren’t already. Kent can also tell that Alexei’s been thinking of the words to say, wanting to ask it right. 

“I think there is a reason you are not drinking. And maybe it is too personal to tell me. But I can listen. Not good, speaking in English. But good listener”. 

“I think your English is very good”, Kent says automatically, because it is. He’s always been impressed by the guys who uproot their whole lives to come play hockey, sometimes not even knowing a word of English. 

It didn’t take a lot of guts to join the NHL at 18 when hockey was all he knew how to do. Alexei has guts. 

“And yeah, there is a reason. It’s not that I don’t want to tell you, it’s just that I’ve never told anyone, not really”. 

Jeff knows bits and pieces, of course, but not the whole story, not like this. 

Alexei sits there, waits. It would be easy, Kent thinks, to not tell him. To say he doesn’t want to talk about it. Alexei would understand, wouldn’t push him, would let it go. 

But for the first time in a long time, Kent wants to tell someone, wants someone to hear the story he kept to himself for so long. 

Kent thinks about Jack, about their celly on ice after their second goal, and about how, for a while when they were both 17 he didn’t think he would ever get to talk to Jack again, let alone skate with him. 

So he tells Alexei. 

About the parties in juniors, about drinking to make it numb. About his rookie year, when there was nothing he wanted more than to make it go away, but he couldn’t because there was a team depending on him, a team that needed him more than anyone had ever needed him in his life. 

He tells Alexei about the night that he probably should have been taken to the hospital he was so sick, and blacking out. Absolutely belligerently drunk out of his mind, enough that he didn’t even recognize Swoops, who got him home, who got him through it. 

They had been too scared to call an ambulance, too scared to jeopardize his career, if the famous Kent Parson ended up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning just months after Jack dropped out of the draft, knew that the headlines would end his career. 

Kent was grateful for it at the time, had promised to cut back on drinking for the rest of the season, but sometimes wonders if maybe they should have. If maybe he didn’t deserve the career he had at all. 

He leaves out some parts of it - Jack’s pills and the fucking, but he’s pretty sure Alexei knows those bits anyway, so why say them out loud. It hadn’t made him stop drinking right away, but he couldn’t do that again, not to Swoops, not like Jack. 

Alexei doesn’t say anything through most of the story, just nods at the right part and hmms thoughtfully, and when Kent gets to the bit about how maybe he should have just kept drinking, Alexei reaches out and covers Kent’s hand on the table with his own massive one. The diner is mostly empty, just a gum popping waitress refilling salt and paper shakers at the counter, and a couple of teenage girls in the corner, laughing and sharing milkshakes. 

Kent likes places like this. They’d been hard to find in Vegas, where it felt like every restaurant had some kind of story they were trying to sell, a theme or a product. Here on the East Coast, these places just exist, one for every town or so it seems. It’s not built on a gimmick, there are no waitresses on roller skates, or Elvis impersonators making milkshakes. 

Alexei nods, says “Thank you for telling me”, all serious and thoughtful. 

And then, “More potato?”

It’s raining when they exit the diner, a soft mist that makes the light from the neon signs look hazy and warm. 

They’ve called an Uber to take them back to the hotel before curfew, but they have to wait a few minutes before it shows up, so Kent is standing under the building’s overhang while they wait. Alexei is a few feet away, right out in the parking lot, either not noticing or caring as the mist slowly soaks his clothing. 

It feels like the start of something, as achingly cliché as that might sound, Kent decides. 

He’s ready. 

***

It shouldn’t be that simple, but it basically is. Now that him and Alexei are friends, now that him and Jack have started to patch their holes, mend their fences, things change with the Falcs. 

Kent is clicking with the team now, meshing with them in a way it had taken months to do with the Aces, and it fucking shows on the ice. 

The Falconers win and win and win. 

The number of games left in the season is dwindling, so every game feels more charged, more important. It’s not just the Falcs playing that way either — every team is pushing to rack up points, pull up in rankings. It sounds ridiculous, but even their losses, infrequent as they are, still feel like wins sometimes, because it’s another game played, another few hours on ice where Kent gets to prove himself, prove that the Aces made a mistake by letting him go. 

And prove it he does. Kent is on a points streak. It’s not the longest point streak he’s ever had, and it’s not going to break any records, personal or otherwise, but it feels good all the same, to keep scoring, keep putting up points with Rusty and Jack on his line. 

Even as the Falcs keep climbing, almost guaranteeing themselves a playoff spot, the Aces are on the other end of the curve. They’re not faring nearly as well, slipping down the rungs of division standings, until even a wild-card spot seems unlikely. They could potentially still make it, depending on how Schooners do, but no one wants to be in that position, and Kent knows exactly frustrated the whole team must be. 

The sports pundits are going wild about it, talking about the Aces record breaking slide to the bottom. One of the bigger hockey bloggers had written a post calling the Parson Trade the worst trade in franchise history, and the internet ran with it. 

They’re saying the team is struggling without Kent, without his steadying influence, without the leadership he brought to the team. Considering that some of these are the same pundits that cried for years about how Kent was too young, too much of a wildcard to successfully captain a team, Kent has been trying to ignore it all, with varying degrees of success. Still, it gets said often enough and by people that matter to the hockey world, that it makes him wonder.

In truth, Kent never felt like he had a particularly steadying influence. With such a young team, sometimes it felt like he was struggling just to hold it together with both hands, struggling just to get them on ice and play the sport they were all paid to play. 

Kent can’t watch every game of course, and he doesn’t want to either. But he sees a lot of clips, on Twitter, catches the a few minutes of games here and there on TVs in hotel lobbies and sports bars. The Aces are playing dirty, and they’re still losing, game after game, and it’s a bad combination. 

Everyone knows that the Aces have always been one of the dirtiest teams in the league, a couple of dirty checks where the ref couldn’t see, snarled insults whenever the cameras turned away. When paired with Kent, probably the fastest guy in the league, and arguably one of flashiest, it had often worked out in their favor. The Aces had been the guys you didn’t want to cross, not just the guys you didn’t want to lose to. 

Kent had often thought privately that the media was so enthralled with him that they didn’t bother calling the Aces out on half the shit they pulled. He had never expressed this opinion to anyone, except for Jeff, who had swatted him sharply on the head with a magazine, called him arrogant, and then sighed, and said “yeah, you might be right about that one”. He was hockey’s golden boy, on their darkest team, and the contrast was enough to keep things interesting. 

To be honest, it hadn’t really bothered Kent either, at least not as much as it could have. For him, it was just the price he had to pay to play hockey. The Aces had chosen him with their first pick, had given him the C, so he owed them. That’s how it was. Or that’s how it had been. 

That’s why it felt so odd now, to watch the Aces going down from the outside. Kent never realized that he might have been keeping the Aces somewhat in check. It’s basically undeniable at this point though, when the Aces have racked up more penalty minutes than anyone else in the league. 

Whenever Kent gets asked about it, practically anytime someone can shove a microphone in his face, he just tries to keep his face carefully blank and say as little as he can get away with. He has a dozen variations of “I’m just focused on playing with the Falcs right now”, anything that won’t end up as a soundbite on ESPN, and for the most part it seems to work. The reporters usually nod thoughtfully, anyway, as if he’s just given them an answer actually worth something. They’re being nicer to him than he expected, and he’s grateful. 

Every game though, Kent makes an active effort to clean up his own game a little. It’s not like he was really considered a dirty player, definitely not by Aces standards. With his speed, he didn’t need to be. But h e doesn’t need that reputation following him here, not when the Falcs are basically squeaky clean by comparison, and he finally feels like he’s earning his place here, putting up the points to prove he doesn’t need to be traded again. 

Besides, Kent doesn’t really need to skate dirty anyway, not with Jack and Rusty on his line, not with Snowy in the goal. He just focuses on playing the game, on passing the puck, on getting to where he needs to be to net goals. 

It feels good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for: Mention of overdose, struggles with alcohol (past) 
> 
> Coming soon: Falcs vs. Aces


	7. Cold as Ice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Falcs face off against the Aces. Jeff Troy is in town!

It’s early April, almost at the end of the regular season, when the Providence Falconers are slotted to play the Aces again. Not for the first time, Kent thanks his lucky stars that they don’t share a conference, that they play each other so rarely, because he’s not sure what he would have done if this game came up before then. 

It’s hard to separate his feelings about Aces the team from Aces management. Most of the guys were good guys, good people, and even the few that he didn’t like - he had still been their captain. 

It makes Kent is even more thankful that this game is on home ice — he doesn’t think he could quite handle going back to Vegas just yet, not with everything he still has to deal with there. 

Kent knows he’ll have to face the music eventually - he still has his apartment there for one thing, since he decided it was too much of a hassle to try and deal with that back when he moved, and Wanda is still out there too. As much as he loves that car, he really doesn’t think that New England winters are going to agree with her if he tries to get her shipped out east. 

Maybe he’ll go back in the summer, when his chances of running into any of Aces management is a little slimmer. For now though, Kent just shoves the thought into a little corner of his mind and ignores it. It’s a good strategy, except apparently on the day the Aces roll into Providence. 

Kent doesn’t think he’s been this anxious for a game since he was a rookie. Even playoffs weren’t this bad, because he knew exactly what his job was and what he had to do - get on the ice and try to score. It’s been the same thing for basically every game he’s played since he was eight years old. Here, no matter what he does, whether he scores big or flops hard, Kent is going to be the center of the story, and it’s not going to be pretty. 

Basically, the only thing that Kent is looking forward to about this game is catching up with Jeff afterwards. That and seeing the look on Chris’s face when the Falcs flatten the Aces. Las Vegas Chris, not Providence Chris. Their last game back in the fall had been fast and brutal, with the Falconers pulling ahead 4-1, due in no small part to Kent’s distraction on the ice. Kent had blamed himself afterwards, and he knew some of the Aces had too, even if they weren’t stupid enough to say it to his face. 

Practice that day goes by fast, and so does his ritual pre-game nap with Kit curled up beside him. The drive to the rink is short, and the walk from his car to the door is even shorter, although still enough time for him to get soaking wet in freezing April rain. He honestly might prefer snow to this mess, Kent thinks grumpily, and lets himself think for just a moment about how nice the weather would be this time of year in Vegas. 

“You gonna be okay?” Jack asks quietly from the locker next to his. Kent looks up, makes eye contact. Jack’s eyes are steady, the shade of blue that Kent knows to mean total focus. 

“Playing them,” Jack elaborates, as if Kent didn’t know exactly what he meant, as if Jack would have meant anything different. 

If Jack is focused, it means Kent has to be focused too. He squeezes the roll of hockey tape in his hands, imagines his anxiety slipping away and replacing it with determination, until Kent wants nothing more than to push off on the ice. 

Kent can’t help it. He grins wolfishly, his non-media approved smile slipping out, a few too many teeth. 

“Yeah, Zimms. I’m gonna be okay. Let’s fucking bring it.”

Jack nods approvingly, touches his shoulder once, lightly, and they turn as one to face the locker room. 

The Providence Falconers fucking bring it. 

From the minute the puck drops, the teams both know who’s in charge, and the fans know it too. Kent wins the first face-off, grinning at Danny, who’s playing first-line center for the Aces, for some unknowable reason. In Kent’s opinion, Danny is not first line material, won’t be for another couple of years, at least. But then again, the Aces are fond of switching up their lines in a way that would make most teams cringe. 

Sometimes it works for them, but it doesn’t tonight. Every minute after the face-off is fast and furious, with the Aces struggling to regain control of the puck for even a minute. Kent takes shift after shift, and manages a wrister in the last minute of the first period that has the goal horn blaring and the Providence fans screaming in their seats. 

They skate back onto the ice for the second period, grinning but still focused. The game’s not nearly over yet. 

The next shift he takes, Kent’s getting doggedly blocked by Pickle and Dills as he moves down the ice. He remembers working on this play with them, and bites back a savage chirp. 

As if he knows Kent was about to mouth off, Pickle pulls up trying to sideswiped the puck. As if. 

“Something wrong, Parser?” Pickle shouts. His heart’s not in it, and Kent ignores the barb, pushing to put on more speed. 

They might still be using his moves, but Kent is faster. 

It only takes one more burst of speed to escape their flank and send the puck to Rusty, who has been loafing unnoticed, and slams it in the goal in a beautiful breakaway. 

The Aces finally manage to break through their defense in the third to score, but it’s desperate and sloppy. 

Kent sees the Aces coach standing with his arms crossed, looking deeply unhappy. Sloppy, he thinks, making eye contact with Rusty across the ice. Sloppy, they can work with. 

Kent is back on the bench, tapping his stick in anticipation when he sees Tater drop his gloves, and start to pound on an Aces enforcer. The roar of the crowd increases, shouts and jeers coming from all corners of the barn. The refs stop them after a few seconds, pull the two apart, and Kent can see Tater grinning maliciously, triumphantly, even as he skates to the Penalty Box. 

Kent didn’t even see what happened out there, to make Tater drop his gloves like that, but some of the words make their way back to the bench before long. 

Words about Kent. Traitorous cocksucker. 

It’s nothing new, nothing Kent hasn’t heard before. But it hits a little different coming from a former teammate, and apparently Tater had thought so too, enough to fight. 

Kent has been on the other side of the ice when Tater drops his gloves, watched it happen to other guys in ESPN highlights. It’s different now. 

The words echo a little in his ears as Kent skates out to take his next shift. It stings a little, but he never particularly liked that guy anyway, and he can see a murderous expression on enough of his old teammates faces that he knows the guy is probably going to get chewed out in the locker room later. Besides there are five minutes left in the period, and no one wants this to go to overtime. Better to cinch it now. 

Kent doesn’t score again, but it doesn’t matter. The Falcs win the game neatly 2-1, and Swoops smirks at him from across the ice, even though he just lost, because of course he does. 

Kent is named first star of the game, takes a lazy loop of the ice with a grin on his face.

Kent arrives back in the locker room with trepidation. He’s not particularly proud of it, but he had gone to PR that morning, begged them to let him skip press after the game, told them he’d do any PR initiative they wanted If they let him have this one. 

To his relief, it worked, and Kent isn’t pulled up, even though he’s sure they’re bloodthirsty for him. Former captain, playing his team for the first time since a mysterious trade, star of the game, is probably exactly the kind of thing press wet dreams are made of. 

Kent is feeling shakier than he cares to admit, despite the win, despite the goal and the assist, so it’s definitely good the cameras aren’t on him. 

Jack is up there though, and so is Alexei, looking a little worse for wear after his fight but grinning, hyped up with adrenaline. 

Usually Kent would stick around a little longer in the locker room, now that especially after a game like this, but he hasn’t seen Jeff since the trade, and fuck if he hasn’t missed the guy. No one’s going to miss him if he leaves now — 

Kent pulls out his phone. 

Kent Parson: Meet me out back in 10?

Jeff Troy: You got it Parsley. 

Kent is not sure how exactly Tater’s nickname for him made it’s way to Jeff’s ears, but that shit is not going to stick if Kent can help it. 

“See ya Parsley,” a couple of the guys call as Kent makes to head out of the locker room. 

Godamnit. 

***

He takes Jeff to a small sports bar he’s discovered, not too far from his apartment. Usually the guys in there couldn’t care less about hockey, but it must be a slow night, because the Kings-Sharks game is on a couple of the TVs, and some of the regulars slide their gaze towards Kent and Jeff when they walk in, meaning there’s a decent chance they just switched from the Falcs game. 

No one comes and asks for their autograph or a selfie or anything though, so they just order drinks at the bar before sliding into a booth at the back, Jeff with some fancy IPA, Kent with a glass of lemonade. 

It’s so second nature to Kent by now, to just order whatever drink strikes his fancy when he goes out after games with Jack and Alexei and occasionally Bitty, that he forgets who he’s with for a second, wonders briefly if Jeff is going to say something about it. 

But Jeff doesn’t say anything, which is nice. There’s only so many heart-to-hearts a guy can have in a season, and Kent kinda feels like he’s coming up on the upper limit. 

Jeff takes a sip of his drink and sighs, places it gently, carefully on the coaster in front of him. 

“It’s good to see you,” Kent says. He’s not sure why, but he feels like it needs to be said. 

Jeff snorts. 

“Yeah it fucking better be.” Another sip. “Missed you, asshole.”

“You too,” Kent mutters. Because well, it’s the truth. This is basically the longest he’s gone without seeing Jeff since he billeted with him, and the realization makes Kent feel sentimental despite himself. 

“Seems like you’re fitting in pretty good around here though,” Jeff says. Kent knows he’s referring to the Falcs record right now, basically just a page of wins, Kent putting up point after point. 

But Kent finds himself grinning, telling Jeff about blaring Britney in the locker room, rooming with Rusty on roadies, morning practice where Snowy always rushes in last, looking like his eyes are still closed, but still manages to block shot after shot. 

Jeff tells him about Jillian, about the hijinks Pickle and Dills got up to on the last Aces night out. It’s comfortable and familiar, and they both ignore the massive, enormous, elephant in the room for as long as they can. 

Kent is on his second lemonade when he breaks. 

“And the team?”

Kent says it lightly — Jeff is a hockey player as well as a friend, and no hockey player likes to be reminded of their failures. But Jeff knows as well as anyone where the Aces stand right now, it’s not the rankings Kent is trying to be sensitive about. It’s the other stuff, the shit going on in the locker room, in the front office, the stuff that any sports reporter would saw off their hands to get ahold of. 

Jeff doesn’t respond right away. Kent rubs at a wet spot on the table where his glass had been resting. 

“It looks like — it’s been rough.” Understatement of the century. 

“Yeah,” Jeff says heavily. Kent can tell he’s weighing it in his mind, deciding what to share. 

Jeff’s never had to hold anything back from him before. Before, they were on the same team. 

They sip their drinks in silence for a minute, before Jeff leans in a little over the table top. Kent’s heart starts pounding, beating a little faster, even though Jeff hasn’t even opened his mouth yet. He knows what this is about. Kent leans in a little too, even though there’s no one around them, and the noise from the game all but guarantees they won’t be overheard. 

“There are rumors going around about your trade. Why it happened. Who made it happen.”

Kent feels his face twitch involuntarily. 

“Rumors that it was shady?” Kent doesn’t mean to just come out and say it like that, but it slips out before he can clamp his lips shut. 

It’s honestly weird to put it into words, he’s thought about it so much since that day. Rationally, Kent knows that hockey players get traded, that it’s part of the game, that players better than him and more valuable than him have been traded with no say in the matter. It still feels arrogant, somehow, to even think that something underhand could have been part of the deal. But at the same time, the Aces had thrown the guy they got for him down the AHL within a week. Their new draft pick wasn’t even first round. Deadspin and Twitter had ripped the franchise apart over the move. It just didn’t make sense. 

Jeff nods, then shakes his head. His voice is low, little more than a murmur, barely distinguishable above the Kings game and the chatter of the room. 

“Yeah, I guess. I don’t really know as many details as I could I guess, I’m trying to stay out of it as much as possible. Keep my head down and all that. Just that apparently, when the team started tanking after you left, people weren’t happy. And some people went digging a little deeper to find out what they could.”

Kent had been so certain just a few minutes ago that they were being overcautious, that they stood no chance of overheard, but he remembers just as well as anyone the way the front office had always seemed to know when the team was out, who was drinking too much. 

He looked around again. Their corner was still deserted, and this was Providence, not Las Vegas. He was being paranoid. 

“So you don’t know…anything?” Kent doesn’t know how much he can really ask. This is Jeff, this is his best friend, but he doesn’t want Jeff to go poking around either, doesn’t want him to potentially put his own career at risk for asking the wrong question. Jeff doesn’t have a no-trade clause either, as far as Kent is aware, and at his age, the Aces initiating a trade could make the next contract that much weaker for him. 

Jeff picks at the label on his bottle, peeling bits off and crumpling them into little balls, wiping the condensation off the glass. 

“They’re saying that somebody found out something…about you. That they didn’t like. And decided it wasn’t worth having you on the team anymore.”

Kent feels all the blood rush out of his face, then back up again. His lemonade suddenly tastes sour in his mouth, for all that a minute ago it had been just a touch too sweet. 

Jeff’s words could really only mean one thing, Kent only has one secret big enough the franchise would care about. But how…?

“Hmm,” Kent finally manages to choke out in response. 

Jeff is looking him with dark eyes. Jeff is angry, Kent realizes, and barely containing it. Kent wonders what the rest of the guys on the team think about it, how much they really know, any of them. Kent suddenly feels so much older than his years, can feel every slashed wrist and twisted ankle as though it were happening in real time. 

Kent loves hockey, but this shit is not hockey. Or maybe it is, and it’s just now hitting home for him. 

They don’t say anything more about it. Kent knows that if he said the word, Jeff would dig in deeper, ask a couple more questions about it, but looking at him now, across the table, Kent knows that he can’t ask him to. Jeff already looks so weary, and it will be as much as he can do to keep the Aces together for the rest of the season, the way their stats are looking. 

God. 

***

Kent drops Jeff back at his hotel with a smile and a wave. They promise to go camping together this summer, after playoffs are over. Maybe out west, maybe up in upstate New York. Somewhere they can get off the grid, do a bunch of hikes. Maybe some fishing. 

Kent sits in the lot for a minute and takes a deep breath. Lets his mind cast back to Jeff’s words, lets them swirl like a rogue wave in his mind. 

Surely Jeff didn’t mean they had found out about him and Zimms? That was so long ago, and those rumors had been swirling around before the draft, while he was a rookie. If they cared about rumors that much, the Aces would never would have picked him in the first place, never would have made him the face of the team. 

There had only been two guys since Jack, one of them carefully planned, the other less so. 

The first was a non-starter. For one thing, it was years ago. For another, the guy was another professional athlete, not hockey but a sport where he had just as much to lose, if not more than Kent. He had shoved an NDA at Kent so fast that Kent had almost reconsidered things before presenting his own. He regretted it now, not just for the sex which had been sloppy and unsatisfying, but also for the emotions that came afterwards. It didn’t feel right, because the guy wasn’t Jack, and the realization sent Kent spiraling for longer than he cared to admit. He remembered thinking then that he would be messed up about Jack for the rest of his life, that he had already met his person, except his person didn’t want him back. The whole encounter had probably played a part in Kent’s fateful decision to visit Samwell that year, but he tried not to think about that visit unless he had to. 

The second already felt like years ago, but really it was only months, and Kent found himself remembering the encounter as he sat in the car. 

Kent opens the contact list in his phone, scrolls down until he hits the number he has saved as “Cammy”, even though that definitely wasn’t the guy’s real name. 

The guy was only around for a few days of some convention, he remembers. It had been a hot night, in fall, because what else was new in Las Vegas, and Kent had ended up at some casino bar after a game, nursing a coke somewhat grumpily. All the Aces had already fucked off, on to bigger and better clubs presumably, and Jeff too had ducked out half an hour ago. Kent didn’t know why he was still there, except he didn’t want to go home just yet. It’s not like he was looking to pull, Kent hadn’t been seriously attracted to anyone for months, and he was rarely attracted to strangers anyway. 

So it had been something of a surprise when a guy had smiled at Kent from across the bar, and Kent has felt a warm flutter rise in his lower belly. The guy had dark hair, and was dressed basically as casually as you could be in one of these places, just slacks and a button down. 

Kent had smiled back, and the guy had come closer, asked Kent if he was a local. He introduced himself as Cammy, and had laughed a little when Kent raised an eyebrow, providing no other information. 

Kent liked the way his hand felt in Kent’s own, enough to lean in closer, tell Cammy his own made up name. 

They had flirted and talked at the bar, even though they were both sure to keep their distance, a carefully calculated foot between them. 

The guy didn’t seem like he recognized Kent, and if he did, he didn’t say anything. Right in that moment, that was enough. 

Kent hasn’t kissed anyone for months, and was feeling just reckless enough to crowd Cammy against the wall of the elevator, to kiss him, wide and open mouthed. 

Their kiss in the elevator had been achingly sweet, and short, and just enough to make Kent feel almost intoxicated as they stumbled down the hall to Cammy’s room. 

They had exchanged numbers afterwards, but Kent had never texted, and the guy hadn’t reached out either. He was only in Vegas for a few days after all, had probably gone back to his town and his job, where no one knew he liked guys and never thought about Kent again. 

But Kent had thought about him once or twice since they kissed, hoped he was doing well. The man had kind eyes, kind but sad, that had reminded Kent a little of Jack’s, in that last month before the draft. 

Their connection, from what Kent can remember, had been nice. It wasn’t the guy’s fault that Kent had felt unbearably guilty the next day, almost unable to eat he felt so sleazy. That was the first and last time Kent had done something like that, for good reason. But the guy himself had been funny and sweet, and pretty damn hot in bed. If things were different, Kent might have wanted to get to know him a little better. 

Kent could text him now, or call him or whatever. But what on earth would he say? “Hi, remember me, I’m actually a famous hockey player, and did you possibly tell my bosses about me sucking your dick”. Absolutely not. It would be easier if they had kept on contact since that night, maybe followed each other on Twitter or something, but Kent hadn’t wanted to do that, hadn’t wanted the guy to find out who he was in real life. 

Kent remembers another detail of their conversation from that night. He remembers how the guy had said he was closeted too, that no one in his town knew about him, all with those nice eyes. Surely there’s no way he would have outed himself like that just to make a few bucks? But then again, Kent has no way of knowing. After all, everyone that’s ever hurt him has had kind eyes. Either it’s not really a good gauge of anything, or Kent is just a crap judge of character. Maybe both. 

Besides, Kent has to remind himself, he has no evidence it really was this guy. He wants to trust but — it’s just that there’s no one else that knows he’s gay, save Jack and Eric and Tater, and mostly Jeff, and he would trust all of them with his life as well as his secrets. 

Kent puts the phone back in his lap, thumb hovering on the contact. Kent has no idea how to have this conversation. 

Kent has no idea how to have this conversation, but maybe someone else does. 

He needs advice. 

Kent Parson: you up?

Eric Bittle: oh my lord is this a booty call 

Eric Bittle: I thought this day would never come 

Kent snorts softly. He wishes. If Bittle weren’t, you know. Dating his ex. He’s a total catch. 

Focus, Kent. 

Kent Parson: I need advice 

Bitty’s typing bubble appears and disappears. Kent forces himself to look away for 30 seconds, concentrate on breathing, and when he looks again, Bitty is still typing, so Kent waits, another 30 seconds, listening to the Coldplay playing over the car radio. 

Eric Bittle: I’ve got a pie about to go in the oven, come on over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Slur used against Kent during the game. 
> 
> Not 100% happy with this chapter, but reading it again was making it seem worse. You know that feeling?
> 
> Next up: Bitty's pies are good, and so is his advice.


	8. Pie and Sympathy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bitty's a good listener.

The drive to Jack and Bitty’s place is a short one. Everything in Providence is a short drive, which Kent is truly starting to appreciate. It’s raining again by the time Kent parks and gets out, a wet slippery mess. Kent thought it as a joke earlier, but there really might be something preferable about snow to this. Kent parks in the driveway, just behind Jack’s truck and cuts the engine. Kent sits there stalling for a minute, trying to buck himself up before going inside. What’s the worst thing Bitty could say?

The porch light turns on, so Kent knows that someone inside heard his car pull up and doesn’t want him to trip and die on the way in. It’s enough. He can do this. Kent takes a deep breath, slides out the car and dashes up the steps to the door. 

Bitty answers the door with a smudge of flour on his cheek and a hug. Kent knows that he shouldn’t be surprised by how damn friendly Bitty always is. They’ve all hung out a couple of times since the Intervention, but mostly they just tweet back on forth a lot on Twitter, making fun of Jack’s inability to use all social media. Sometimes they text too — Kent sends pictures of Kit and her hijinks and Bitty sends pictures of his baked creations. 

If it were anybody else, Kent would consider them definitely friends, but here he’s just so painfully aware that Bitty is first and foremost, Jack’s boyfriend. So he’s really not sure what impulse made him go and text Bitty like that. But now he’s here and Bitty doesn’t seem to mind, so it can’t be all bad. Besides, Bitty had wished Kent good luck before the game tonight, and Kent had said thank you. So yeah. Friends. Or something. 

Kent starts to relax when Bitty leads him straight to the kitchen. The air is warm, and fragrant, as always, sweet with a smell that Kent is starting to associate with Jack’s house. There’s something baking in the oven, of course, and the dishwasher is humming, a few stray bowls and ladles piled up in the sink. It’s achingly familiar, for all that Kent has only been here a few times, and Kent lets himself ease into the ambiance. 

Bitty pulls a chair out for Kent at the wooden breakfast table, and Kent sinks into it gratefully. Somehow between his worry for Jeff and his Big Gay Crisis™, Kent forgot that he played a full hockey game tonight, but his body definitely didn’t, and it is not shy in letting Kent know about it now. 

A timer goes off across the kitchen, and Bitty bustles over to the oven, slipping on bright blue oven mitts and pulling a pie out, checking it for doneness with an expert eye. 

Kent has been the grateful recipient of more than a few of Bitty’s baked goods at this point, brownies and cookies smuggled with Jack to practice, Falcs nutritionist be damned. Once, after a particularly rough loss, a whole apple blueberry pie had magically appeared at his door with no sign of how it got there. Kent had sighed, accepted that apparently no one on the team could keep his address quiet, and eaten about half of it in one go. It was delicious. 

Somehow, even that doesn’t compare to this one. Best smelling thing in the universe is surely not a hyperbolic descriptor. Kent spends all day around smelly hockey players, so his sense of smell is generally pretty desensitized out of sheer necessity, but of this he is certain. 

“We should really let it cool a few minutes first,” Bitty says, biting his lip and looking over at Kent. 

Kent doesn’t want to say anything, because Bitty is obviously the expert, but he’s pretty sure he’s actually drooling at this point, and he’s not sure he can physically stay in this kitchen without doing something embarrassing, like launching himself mouth first towards the pie. 

“Let’s just cut into it now,” Bitty decides. 

Thank god. 

Kent nods emphatically. 

Bitty is quick with a knife, and it’s just another minute before he’s sliding a piece of steaming pie and a glass of milk over to Kent on the table, and sitting across him with plate and glass of his own. 

Kent smiles at the milk. Jack had always made him drink milk back at the Zimmerman’s, and if Kent knows him, he bets Jack still drinks it after every workout. It’s not a bad idea though and in fact, he should probably drink a couple. He’s already starting to drop a little weight, and the playoffs aren’t even here yet. Kent’s always been one of the smaller guys in the league, but the stress of being on a new team and the media pressure on him definitely isn’t helping. 

They eat pie in silence for a couple of minutes. Kent is pretty sure he actually moans when the first bite touches his tongue. Which, embarrassing. Bitty looks pleased though, touch of pink coloring his cheekbones, so Kent just keeps going, forking bite after bite into his mouth. 

Kent finishes his first slice, and Bitty gets up to dish him out another, pouring him another glass of milk. 

Bitty clears his throat gently. 

“Kent.” 

Kent looks up from his plate, where his focus has been total. 

“You wanted advice about something? Not that you can’t just sit here and eat pie, because you totally can. It’s just, you know. If you wanted advice. Not that you have to tell me —”

Bitty breaks off, pink spots deepening in color. His southern drawl slips out a little more when he’s flustered, Kent notes. It’s cute. 

Kent clears his throat. He doesn’t even know where to start. Or, he does, but he doesn’t know how to. Come on, Kent. No worse than getting back on the ice after a bad check. 

“So, I’m gay.” It feels important to start with those words, even if Bitty already knows. Kent had practiced this part in the car over, a couple more times than he cares to admit. 

He looks up. Bitty is nodding encouragingly across the table. Maybe Kent shouldn’t have started this way. Bitty probably thinks that Kent is literally just having a crisis about that. Kent wishes it were that simple. 

“So, back in October, there was this guy I met.” 

It takes a few minute, starts slowly, it all spills out. About meeting the guy, about the hookup, about the next day when he felt guilty. He tells Bitty about his confusion around the trade, how talking with Jeff had made him suspect things he felt too crazy to even vocalize before. Once he really gets going, it practically bubbles out of him, punctuated by bites of pastry and sips of milk and waves of fork. 

Bitty is a more vocal listener than Tater, but still a good one. He bites his lip when Kent describes Cammy smiling at him from across the bar, gasps when Kent describes kissing him in the elevator. 

“Oh my lord,” is what comes out, when Kent describes their night together. 

And then, “Bless his heart,” when Kent tells Bitty about how Cammy was maybe even more closeted than Kent, how Kent had briefly felt bad letting the guy go back to a life of shame and hiding before remembering that the life he was living himself wasn’t really all that different, not if you thought about it. 

That makes Bitty look sad, and Kent quickly barrels on to the worst of it. Bitty starts gnawing at his lip as Kent forces out his suspicions, that the Aces somehow found out, that they kicked him out because he’s gay, that they’re going to use it to topple his career out of spite or malice or whatever. 

Kent stops there, because he doesn’t really have much else to tell, nothing more than months of speculation anyway, and he’s pretty sure he’s run through every possible scenario lying awake in bed at night. He shoves a forkful of pie in his mouth instead, forces himself to chew it swallow, then take another bite, before finally looking up at Bitty to gauge his reaction. 

Bitty is staring, mouth wide open in shock. He looks like a comic book character, you can read the shock so clearly on his face, in his eyes. 

It’s Bitty’s turn to take a bite of pie now, chewing and swallowing deliberately. Kent can tell that Bitty is using the time to think out his response, so Kent just goes back to his own slice. It doesn’t bother him — he knows he would need time to process if he were on the other end. Besides, he feels surprisingly better now that he’s gotten it all off his chest, even if it did sound a little crazy saying it all out loud like that.

“Kent, are you serious?”

Bitty’s flushing again, red creeping up his neck, all the way to the tips of his ears. 

It’s on the tip of his tongue to say something flippant, to say that he’s joking, but somehow he doesn’t think that Bitty would take it that well. 

He nods instead. 

He can almost see the gears whirring in Bitty’s head, trying to break apart everything Kent has just said into rational pieces. 

“So we’ve got a guy. That you hooked up with.” The phrase “hooked up” sounds delightfully incongruous in Bitty’s sweet drawl. “And your theory is that he sold you out to the Aces somehow, and then the Aces fired you for being gay?” It’s a question, but not really a question. Bitty’s just sounding it out, the way Kent has every night for two months now. 

“Yeah, pretty much.” It actually sounds pretty simple when Bitty puts it like that. Even so though — 

Bitty can sense his hesitation. “What, am I missing something?” 

“Not really.” 

Bitty whistles, low and slow. “That’s pretty serious stuff, Kent. The Aces and the stuff with management? What you’re saying — that’s pretty serious stuff.” 

“Yeah, I know.” 

“But you’re serious about that too? You really think they would do something like that?” 

“Well yeah,” Kent says, frowning. “I don’t know how anyone would ever prove it, unless someone from management straight up came out and said it, but I dunno. It seems…like a possibility.” A very real possibility, but there’s always room in his mind for doubt. 

“And that’s not illegal?” Bitty’s tone is outraged. “That they could do something like that, something so shady, and just offer no explanation?” 

Kent actually isn’t sure about that whole aspect of it. He knows the team doesn’t need to offer an explanation for a trade, not without a no-trade clause in place. The Aces didn’t cite his morality clause or anything like that, so chances are that the actual reason was known to a very select group of people. Linda hadn’t been able to figure it out either, and Kent trusted Linda. 

Kent’s not a lawyer, but he doesn’t even know if it actually is illegal to be fired for being gay, especially in Nevada. And how would anyone ever prove it, if the Aces didn’t cite it as the reason for the trade. The Aces could probably go to their grave saying the trade was in Kent’s best interest, and with the team standings the way they were, who would ever disagree? Thinking about it is making his head spin, with tiredness and disgust. 

Bitty is still speaking, so Kent forces himself to listen. “And they would really keep watch of you like that? The whole team? To make sure you were staying in line?” 

He means management, the front office. Kent nods. 

“Jack’s never described anything like that happening with the Falcs.” 

Kent thinks of the casino fundraisers, about the numbers the whole team was always kinda aware of, seats and jerseys and the like, and just nods again. Words feel hard right now, but Bitty doesn’t seem to mind his non-verbosity at the moment. 

“Well,” Bitty drawls, southern accent out in full force. “I can safely say that is not what I was expecting you to say.” His words are light, but Bitty’s face is worried again, with another flicker of what looks like sadness. Fuck. Kent wanted advice, but he didn’t mean to make Bitty worry, and now he feels guilty. Maybe he should have just kept this whole thing to himself, puzzled it out by himself. Until it all blew up in his face, and then Bitty would have found out anyway. 

Bitty reaches across the table to touch Kent’s hand, gently. 

“There’s no other way they could have found out? Nothing else that would have triggered the trade?” 

Kent thinks again about the people that know. Him, obviously. Jack, Bitty. Tater. Jeff. Thinks about how careful he was, especially after his rookie year, especially after he was made captain. Despite what the media likes to speculate about him, Kent basically lives a pretty low key life. He gets up, plays hockey, and goes to bed. It’s been like that for years, and until recently, that was enough.

Kent shakes his head. 

Bitty’s hand moves to cover Kent’s more firmly. It’s soft, and smaller than Kent’s, but calloused in some of the same places, from holding a hockey stick. 

“Then you need to find out whatever you can. To protect yourself and your career.” 

“I don’t want to jeopardize anything by poking my head places where it doesn’t belong,” Kent says. It’s true. The political side of hockey is not something he wants to get involved in. Bad Bob had told him that, back when he was a teenager, and it had stuck with him ever since. 

“The Aces did you dirty by trading you like that. The Falcs knew it when they picked you up, your fans knew it and your enemies did too. You’ve proved yourself a million times over since then, working as hard as you have with your new team.” 

“Any guy would have —” 

He wants to say that any other hockey player would have done what he did, kept his head down and kept his eyes on the ice, but Bitty cuts him off before Kent can even get the sentence out, shaking his head. 

“That’s bull, and you know it Kent. Some guys would have done what you did, but there are a whole lot of others who would have let themselves spiral, who would have let their performance on the ice slip.”

Bitty might be right. 

“You proved yourself as a hockey player by keeping on playing the way you did. Now you owe it to Kent the person to figure out the other half, or it’s going to haunt you for the rest of your career.” 

“How though? I can’t put Jeff in that position, and —” 

Bitty shakes his head again. 

“I know this probably isn’t what you want to hear, but I think the only way you’re really going to know for sure is if you ask.”

Kent stares in shock, temporarily distracted by the small hand on top of his own. 

“Ask who, the Aces?” The thought of getting back in touch with Chris, or Coach, or even Frank makes him feel nauseous. There’s a box he doesn’t want to open, not when avoiding it is clearly going so well. 

“The guy”, Bitty chides softly. “Cammy, or whatever his name is. You said he seemed trustworthy, right? Just be delicate when you ask, and maybe he’ll be able to give you the answers you need.”

It sounds rational when Bitty says it. Kent finishes the last bite of his second slice, mulling it over. Bitty is probably right. Besides what does he have to lose? The worst had already happened - he’d already been traded, and it turned out nothing like he would have expected. 

Seconds later, Bitty echoes his thoughts. 

“Besides, what do you have to lose from reaching out? Either he’s already sold you out, or he hasn’t, and there’s something else going on. Either way, you deserve to know.”

“Deserve to know what?” 

It’s Jack, coming in just in time to catch the last few words of their conversation. 

Bitty squeezes Kent’s hand once, gently, and then lets go. 

Of course. 

Jack had been down in the basement when Kent arrived, finishing some godawful World War II documentary, Bitty had said with a shudder. Jack always did like a good documentary to unwind after a game. Some things didn’t change. Kent hadn’t questioned it, accepting his good luck in getting Bitty alone wholeheartedly. 

Jack’s presence in the kitchen manages to startle Kent from whatever kind of trance he’d been in. Bitty really is a good listener. 

“Nothing,” Kent says, at the same time Bitty says, “Just something with his old team” and then claps a hand over his mouth. 

Kent stifles a laugh at the horrified expression on Bitty’s face. He hadn’t explicitly told Bitty to keep it a secret, and in fact, Kent had kind of expected that Bitty would tell Jack some of it sooner or later. Bitty turns to unload the dishwasher, probably trying to avoid causing any more damage, and Kent lets a small smile loose, even though only Jack is there to catch it. 

Probably time to go. Kent stands up, stretching out his back as he does so, and brings his plate and glass over to the sink. 

“Thanks for the help Bits. And the pie. But I better be heading out. Kit will be mad if I’m out too late.”

It’s not even a lie, but Kent also doesn’t want to outstay his welcome, and in between Jeff and Bitty, he’s feeling a little overwhelmed. He definitely has a lot to think about on his own. 

“I’ll walk you out,” Jack says, looking from him to Bitty’s back with a stubborn furrow to his brow that Kent recognizes at once. 

Kent groans inwardly. Jack is going to try and pull it out of him, and Kent is real bad at saying no to Jack when he’s determined like this. 

“What was that?” Jack asks, as soon as they’re in the entryway and out of earshot of the kitchen. 

Kent shrugs his shoulders into his coat, pulls a hat out of his pocket. Necessary, even for the short walk down Jack’s driveway to his car. In Las Vegas, the weather would have been pushing 80 degrees every day by now, if not higher. 

Kent shrugs. “Needed advice.” He hopes Jack didn’t notice the way he ran out after the game. It feels silly even to admit it, but he doesn’t want Jack to think he was too eager to go hang out with the Aces, not when things are finally going so well with the Falcs. 

Jack is still standing between Kent and the door, so he elaborates a little, still sticking to the truth. “Bits was really nice about it.”

“Advice about the team?” Jack presses. The corners of his lips are turned down in a frown, and Kent remembers how desperately he used to want to erase that downward turn. He still does, but it’s different now, now that he knows Jack’s not going to sneak away and self-medicate if Kent doesn’t manage. Now that Jack has Bitty. 

“Not exactly.”

Kent’s not trying to be coy, he can tell that Jack’s not going to let him leave with giving a better answer. His arms are clenched in the most stubborn of Jack poses, and his blue eyes don’t leave Kent’s. 

The thing is, Jack would probably have good advice too. He’s Kent’s captain now, and deals with the Falcs’ management more than anyone, so he probably has a good base to compare it too. The boy Jack had been has nothing on the man Jack has become, confident in himself and his relationship with Bitty, leading his team to win after win. College really had been good to Jack, and not for the first time, Kent wonders what it must have been like, having all that time dedicated to personal growth. But even with all that, Kent doesn’t know how to tell him. Doesn’t know if he can really tell Jack about the other guy, the one provoking all these suspicions in the first place. And it’s not that Kent thinks Jack is going to be mad, or disapproving of that, not when he has Bitty, a whole boyfriend basically living in his house. 

It’s just that airing it all out like that feels like too much, after playing his cards so close to his chest for so long, especially around Jack. His breath speeds up a little, and he’s hyperventilating before he even realizes, all the stress of the evening coalescing into a big awful lump at the base of his throat. 

A hand lands on his shoulder, squeezing hard. 

“Hey,” Jack says softly. “It’s okay, I didn’t mean to push. You’re right, Bitty is the best for advice. You’ll tell me when you’re ready”. 

The certainty in his voice, that one day, Kent will be ready, and that when he is, Jack will be there to listen, that it won’t be like last time, nearly crushes him. It’s enough for Kent to grab on to, to slow his breathing until it’s back in the realm of normal. Jack is squeezing his shoulder with a slow tempo, and Kent matches his breath to it, until he’s able to open eyes he didn’t realize were pressed tightly shut. 

Jack is still there, blue eyes now filled with concern. 

Maybe this is what it will really be like now. Jack, and Bitty, and even Tater just there, to listen to him, to give him advice. 

“It’s just stuff with the Aces. And you know. Me being gay.” 

It comes out as a rush. This is the second time tonight he’s saying those words, but before now, he hadn’t said them for a very, very long time. Not to anyone, even himself. He hasn’t had to. It’s not that Kent is in denial exactly. He knows full well that he’s gay, had known for years before Jack, and knew it after him too. It’s always been a part of him, and in a different life, maybe he would be out by now, going to Pride parades and all that. 

But he chose hockey. He always chose hockey. The chance to play beautiful, fast, hockey. The chance to have his name on trophies, the chance to lead his team to greatness. He doesn’t regret that choice, exactly, because it’s paid off, more than he ever dreamt it would. But sometimes he does wonder what it would be like if things were different, if he lived that different life. 

Kent hasn’t ever seriously entertained the thought of coming out since Jack. If he had stayed with the Aces, got his name on another Cup, he might have made that choice, but not now, and the world of what ifs is a always a slippery slope. And now, that the possibility seems a little closer —

It’s not even the whole story, because truthfully the reason the only reason he’s in crisis about this now, is because somewhere, somehow, someone in the Aces franchise dug up some dirt on him and used it to kick him out of the team he played for for almost six years. 

“Obviously, there’s more to the story. I’m so glad you feel like you can turn to Bitty. He’s a pretty awesome guy to have on your side.” 

Kent doesn’t feel even a drop of insincerity in his words. 

“And Kent? I’m on your side too.” 

Jack lets him go with a hug and a wave, and Kent lets those words sink in on the drive home. Jack is on his side. Bitty is on his side, Jeff is on his side. 

There are people that care about him, care how he’s doing, unrelated to his hockey standings. 

Wild.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for: mention of the possibility of non-consensual outing
> 
> Poor Kent. He’s getting there, but he needs a lawyer and a therapist.


	9. Rock and Roll is Here to Stay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack's up.

Kent waits until the next day to try to talk to Cammy. They’re leaving for the last roadie of the regular season, although thankfully it’s a short one. Every game at this point is a little less fun, a little more on edge for everyone, and it’s getting to him. 

Bitty had suggested that Kent start with a simple “Hey, how’s going” and for lack of any better idea, that’s what Kent tries first. It feels weirdly impulsive to send the text, even though it’s literally not impulsive at all. It’s also weird to text someone that isn’t a hockey player or literally related to him. Or Bitty.

The message doesn’t send. Kent tries again, turns his phone data on and off again. He eventually gets it to send minutes before the plane starts to shuttle for takeoff, but there’s no response from the number, and a bad feeling rises in his throat. 

Rusty has the window seat next to him, and is somehow already asleep, curled up in one of those stupid neck pillows and drooling slightly. Kent forces himself to put his phone on airplane mode, and pull out some stats Jack wanted him to take a look at. 

By the time the plane lands, there will be a reply waiting for him. 

***

There’s still no response as the plane lands. A pit forms in his stomach, one that isn’t helped by Tater’s booming laugh at the lines of drool now decorating Rusty’s chin, or Jack’s gentle bump of hip as they stand to leave the plane. 

The roadie passes by in a blur of games, practices. Screaming fans, booing haters. More wins then losses, just as everyone kinda expects at this point. 

The Falcs secure their playoffs spot in an anticlimactic game against the Canes. It’s a relief for sure, to have at least made it this far, but Kent is honestly too distracted to even think about going out with the rest of the team to celebrate. He brushes off the invitation, and ignores Jack’s and Tater’s worried looks to head straight to the hotel room and schedule a meeting with Linda and his lawyer for the minute they’re back in Providence. 

He should have done this weeks ago, actually, but he didn’t, so there’s no sense in beating himself up about it now. He likes them both individually, but whenever Kent has to have a conversation with both of them together, he always feels like a little kid, getting scolded by people that are much more adult than he will ever manage to be. 

Kent is moody and grouchy the whole trip back to Providence, but there’s still no response from Cammy, and it’s starting to settle in his stomach that there isn’t going to be. Kent tries to hide his anxiety, and thinks he manages it reasonably well, until he’s back in his own apartment, and Kit is purring in his lap and it all comes crashing down again. 

Kent barely sleeps that night, in anticipation of the meeting. 

It’s over the phone, because of course they’re currently sitting in three different time zones, and also Kent thinks he would actually combust if they had this conversation in person. 

Kent doesn’t usually talk that much with either of them during this part of the season, he’s too stressed, and he’s acutely aware that the last time they talked like this, it was because Kent was getting traded and he was having a total freakout. 

The phone call gets started after his second cup of coffee is drained, and a third one is made and sitting on the table. Kent tends to get a little shaky after cup two, but he barely slept, and he still has practice after this, so fuck it. 

He hadn’t hinted at the subject matter when he requested the meeting, too scared to put it into writing, even over email, so he knows that Linda and Dave, his lawyer, are basically coming in blind here, know nothing other than his insistence they schedule a call and that it’s important. 

“So, I’m gay.” 

The words echo into the line. Kent can hear both Linda and Dave dialed in. Neither says a word. This actually isn’t even the bad part. He thinks Linda might suspect already. He knows she must keep track of his personal life, and he’s never dated, not even anything resembling dating the way her other clients must. 

Linda takes a breath into the phone. 

“Okay. You’re gay.” Her voice sounds the same as it had a minute ago as they exchanged pleasantries, and Kent tries to be comforted by it. 

“Is there a reason you’re telling us this now? Not that there needs to be,” she hastens to say. “Just that, there usually is.” 

There’s the trace of an edge in her voice, and it’s enough to make the next words from Kent sound manic and rushed. 

“Because I think the Aces knew and traded me because of it. And there are other people that know also, and maybe it’s going to come out soon.” 

“Kent, honey. I’m going to need you to start from the beginning here.” Her voice is still even. Dave still hasn’t said anything at all. 

Kent takes a deep breath and steels himself. 

The story comes out a little smoother this time, which is a small miracle. Practice makes perfect and all that. 

“Which —” 

He doesn’t actually know how to end the story, so he just lets his voice trail off into the nethersphere. He was going to say something more about the legality of the situation, but it’s barely held-together conjecture at this point, tempered only by swirling thoughts and half-submerged fears and — 

“Which would be illegal,” Linda cuts in sharply. She sounds angry, but not at Kent, thank god. 

“Which, yeah.” Kent agrees lamely. Sums it up. 

Dave, the only person in this situation who is qualified to actually know anything at all about legality, cuts in. 

“I would need to do some research.” Nevertheless, he launches into a diatribe that Kent can barely follow, Dave talking a mile a minute about state rights and precedents and Supreme Court rulings that have Kent quickly draining his third, now completely cold cup of coffee. 

Linda breaks in next. “That’s all fine and well, but…” Her musings have more to do with the implications of Kent coming out at all, willingly or not. Implications that Kent has barely stopped to consider, because the way his mind can choose to dwell on some things and completely ignore others is truly dizzying. 

Dave is the one to eventually bring their hour-long phone call to an end. 

“We’re going to need more information and probably more lawyers before we work out our next move. We obviously don’t have any evidence at this point, other than your suspicions, Kent, but. I don’t think anyone would be surprised by the Aces pulling a move like that at this point.” Kent can basically picture him rubbing his nose tiredly in his office, hair greying at the temples. 

“Cock-sucking assholes,” Linda agrees on the other end. 

“Linda,” Kent squeaks out, a little shocked. 

“Sorry, Parson. No offense.” It makes Kent laugh a little, and he realizes he’s barely been breathing this whole time, so he sucks in a couple of deep ones. 

God. 

***

Kent’s still feeling a little tight from his conversation with Linda and Dave when he pulls up to the rink for practice. It hadn’t ended badly at all - Dave had promised to do some research, and Linda to quietly reach out to a couple of her PR contacts. Neither of them said anything bad about the whole gay thing. Overall, they both took it in their stride, which maybe he shouldn’t be surprised by, but he is. But then again, he does pay them both pretty well, so he guesses they kinda have to.

Still, he’s just roughly doubled the circle of people that know he’s gay, and it’s definitely weighing on him, makes the situation seem a little more real than it had when it was just him and Bitty at the kitchen table. Plus, Kent has a list in the notes app on his phone of all the terms Dave had been using - “Equal Employment” and something called “Title Seven” and a whole bunch of other stuff that he definitely wants to look up when he gets home. Not for the first time, Kent wonders what it would have been like to go to college and to study that stuff, or to go to law school and to have to study it even more, like Dave. 

Not that Kent wants to be a lawyer, or anything like that. But it’s safe to say that it’s definitely on his mind as he does his warm-up stretches and pulls on his skates. On his mind as the team warms up, as Coach threatens suicide drills if they don’t get it together. 

Still on his mind two hours later when they exit the ice, after a shoot-out that leaves everyone sore and cranky. 

Kent spends twenty minutes on a bike to work off some leftover nervous energy, before heading to the showers. 

Most of the guys have already showered or peeled off for individual workouts or lunch, so the locker room is thankfully pretty empty as Kent slowly sheds his gear, letting the hot water pound his sore muscles and ease some of discomfort that still prickles at the back of his mind. 

When Kent returns to his stall, Jack is still standing in front of his own locker, scowling intensely at his phone. 

Kent grunts an acknowledgment and gets straight to slinging stuff in his gear bag. The sooner he can get back to his apartment and Kit, start googling some of this shit, the better. 

The last guy leaves, and then it’s just the two of them. Kent gets a flicker of a memory of a very different time in Rimouski when it was just the two of them left in the locker room, and shivers inadvertently. Those memories don’t have a place here. 

“You were off today,” Jack says quietly. 

Kent doesn’t look up, but he bristles a little. It sounds like an accusation, and he had not been off today, thank you very much, just slightly preoccupied. Very slightly. 

Jack’s voice is soft, even though Kent knows there’s no one around to overhear. 

“What’s going on?”

Kent’s voice comes out slightly more snappish than he intends. 

“Does something have to be going on for me to have an off day? Why can’t I just have a bad practice and move on?” It was only bad by his standards, the Coach hadn’t said anything, but Kent still felt the dissatisfaction in his body, would get back on the ice now if it wasn’t being used for someone’s private skate time. 

In contrast to Kent, Jack’s voice is infuriatingly patient sounding. 

“Did you? Just have a bad practice?” 

“You tell me.” 

Kent knows he’s not being fair, knows that Jack is just checking in, but for some reason, Jack thinking that he needs to be checked on is enough to set him off. Kent throws the last of his gear in his stall, turns to storm away, but Jack is blocking him, standing right in his space. He definitely hasn’t lost the ability to creep up on people, then. 

When Kent tries to move to one side. Jack steps with him. 

“Let me by,” Kent says through gritted teeth. He doesn’t want to argue, doesn’t want to say something he’s going to regret, when things were going so good. 

“Is there something I need to be worried about?” 

They could be here all night. 

“I can deal with my own problems”

“I’m not saying that you can’t, but you obviously you aren’t.” 

“Oh, because now you care?” 

Kent doesn’t realize that he’s raised his voice until it’s too late, and his words are already echoing off the empty walls of the locker room, bouncing back in his face. He hates it instantly, but it’s also strangely familiar, falling back into arguing with Jack. It’s instantly recognizable - he knows how to do this, has been doing it for years. It’s worn around the edges, like a t-shirt that’s been worn a few too many times. 

Jack’s eyes are dark and stormy. Angry, and something else. 

“I can’t believe you still don’t trust me,” Jack hisses. Sometimes Jack blows up when he’s angry, sometimes he just gets quieter. This is one of the latter instances, and Kent hates it, has never known to respond. In his house, they shouted. 

His words hit Kent like a load of bricks. Make him want to stumble backwards, blinded by the aching venom in Jack’s voice. 

It’s not even true, is the worst part. He does trust Jack, maybe he never even stopped trusting him in the first place, even with every call that went straight to voicemail, every text that went unanswered. He trusts Jack, but he doesn’t trust himself and Jack. He’s happy that they’re friends again, but can’t lean into their friendship the way he desperately wants to. 

If this were Old Kent, now would be the time he says something cruel and mean, just for the sake of watching Jack’s face crumble, watching his eyes shutter. Old Kent would pour vodka on the fire, just to watch the flames jump up higher, toss the bottle in for good measure, and run. Run away, as far and as fast as he could. 

But Old Kent would never be here, would never have made it this far in the Falconer’s locker room, and he knows it. Kent forces himself to take a deep breath, before everything he wants to shout and scream in Jack’s face spills out uninvited anyway. 

The words that come out next are his own version of whispered, hoarse and raw. Kent wishes desperately that they were doing this somewhere other than the locker room, which is all too public, but him and Jack have never been very good at timing their arguments. 

Probably why Tater and Bitty had to practically kidnap him in the first place. 

“I’m still worried that you’re going to leave me behind,” he admits. “When you realize how fucked up I am. And then I won’t have anything left, and it all will have been for nothing.” 

It feels like something a character in a book would say, pleading and quiet. 

Jack’s face softens, looks devastated and hurt and worried, all wrapped into one. 

Kent didn’t mean to hurt him. He never meant to hurt Jack. 

Jack is rueful. Kent could fill a whole other book, a sequel to the one before with every expression he sees on Jack’s face where other people only see hockey robot. But who would read it?

“I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to leave you behind. I made a promise to be better. We’re different people now than we were before.” 

Jack pauses, and repeats it. 

“We’re different people Kenny.” 

Jack looks like he wants to say something else, but Kent is too busy reflecting on his own goddamn damaged goods. 

Yeah, Kent knows what it’s like to feel abandoned. Has a tendency of clawing out with everything he’s got to keep what he loves in his life. Historically it hasn’t gone so well. His father, Jack the first time around. The Aces. He feels so weak for wanting this, needing this reassurance from Jack again.

“I’m sorry,” Kent says, meaning it. 

Jack looks confused. “You have nothing to be sorry for.” 

Vocalize, Kent. 

“I’m sorry because we already had a conversation about this and I’m bringing it all up again.”

This time, it’s Jack looking at him like he’s grown two heads. 

“You don’t just have one conversation about something and expect it to solve everything. We’re going to keep having conversations about it for the rest of our lives. That’s just how it is. That’s what being an adult fucking is.” 

Christ, that fucking sucks. Sometimes Kent really does forget that the two of them are adults now, not hormone-crazed teenagers taking turns sucking each other off in the back of a car and not talking about it afterwards. 

Still though. Jack has a point. 

It feels like it needs acknowledgement, so he nods, says “Okay”. 

“Besides,” Jack smirks a little, “Bitty would never let me give you up again.” 

Kent doesn’t let himself think about that too hard, not even for a millisecond. Nope. 

Jack pushes away from his locker, slinging his gear bag over his shoulder and turning back towards Kent with a casual flourish. 

“Lunch?” Jack asks, eyebrow quirked. 

Kent isn’t used to walking away from arguments feeling happier than when he walked in, feeling like something is settled. It almost gives him whiplash. Almost. 

“Yeah, I’m coming.”

***

There’s a few days between the end of the regular season and the start of the playoffs, while a couple of other teams duke it out for spots. 

The Aces didn’t make the playoffs, for the first time since they drafted Kent, gave him the C. They dropped so far in points since Kent left, and had been ripped apart by the media ever since. Kent should maybe feel glad that the Aces didn’t make it, but those guys are his friends too, at least some of them are, and he knows that none of them wanted to end the season that way. 

Jeff had texted him the night the Falcs secured their spot. 

Jeff Troy: I’m rooting for the Falcs now 

Jeff Troy: Anyone but the Schooners am I right 

The Schooners had knocked the Aces out of the last possibility of wild card spot. There was enough bad blood between the teams to be considered a rivalry at this point, brief history be damned. 

Jeff Troy: Go get em Parsley 

Kent spared an eye-roll for the nickname, which has well and truly stuck at this point. Kent has learned that Tater is responsible for at least half of the nicknames in the locker room, and definitely a good portion of the more idiotic ones. He still can’t believe that Jack let them get away with “Zimmboni”, but Jack just smirks when Kent asks so he can’t care all that much. Kent still calls him Zimms on the ice, doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to shake the habit, but Jack doesn’t seem to mind that either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter wasn't going to exist, but I wanted Kent to have some Talks before playoffs. Stay safe out there, y'all!
> 
> Warning for: Linda calling the Aces a name? idk


	10. ¿Por qué me estoy cayendo?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Playoffs, and pie.

Post-season hits the team like a load of bricks.

Kent starts to feel bone weary, tired. He’s dropping weight with every day and he doesn’t have much to lose. Jack starts to come in with Bitty’s pies just about every practice. Nate the nutritionist isn’t even mad like he usually would be. At this point, they all need it, empty calories or not. Kent would rather eat pie than another disgusting protein shake any day of the week.

First Round

They’re playing against the third-seeded Flyers, which means the first two games are at home, but the Flyers don’t let them get comfortable. The Providence Falconers win Game 1, lose Game 2, and things are definitely tense as they head to Philly for Game 3.

They lose Game 3, in overtime, which makes it all harder to swallow. Kent’s focus is off, he knows it is, and he curses himself for letting it spill over to the ice.

Kent knows that Jack can tell something’s wrong, that Kent’s focus isn’t entirely on the ice. Jack can tell, but he doesn’t push like last time, just gives Kent a gentle shoulder check and a worried smile.

Kent resolves privately that the Falcs are not going to be kicked out of playoffs this early, not if he can help it.

Kent ducks away the next morning after their ice time to have another conversation with Dave and Linda that goes exactly nowhere. Dave sounds like he’s been pulling a lot of late nights, but getting nowhere, and Linda isn’t that much more help. They both tell him to focus on playoffs right now, and that they’ll talk more when it’s all over. It’s a bit like his mom telling him not to be nervous before the draft — well-intentioned, but fundamentally impossible.

But it’s the playoffs, and Kent is Kent and he has to get his head back in the game, worried or not.

They win game 4, and Kent feels relief seeping through his too-tired bones, grins wearily at Jack, who scored the game winner in the third period.

They’re not over the hill yet, but they’re going to fight for it, and the locker room atmosphere is flushed and jovial, ready to head back to Providence for Game 5.

The Flyers end up taking them all the way to Game 7, but the Falconers win it, 4-2, and triumphant.

Kent is trying so hard to take Dave and Linda’s advice and stay focused on the game, but Cammy still doesn’t pick up when Kent tries to call again before the second round. Kent throws the phone down in frustration, and curses himself for being so stupid, for not making the guy sign an NDA, for assuming it was a real number, all of it.

Second Round

When the Falcs move on to Round 2, the mood changes very slightly. None of them say anything, apart from the usual locker room speeches, but all of them are very aware that they could go all the way this year, they could be hoisting the Stanley Cup as their own.

They sweep the first three games, to sold-out crowds first in Madison Square Garden then at home.

Kent and Tater go over to Jack’s house after Game 3, too exhausted to do anything more than hang out on the couches, and chirp Jack for his choice of yet another World War II documentary. Bitty keeps shoving baked goods at Kent, and laments Kent’s weight loss loudly and vocally enough that Kent keeps accepting them.

***

Kent hates growing a playoff beard, he always has. His beard doesn’t grow fast enough to be much for the first few games, but now it’s just scratchy and patchy and awful, and he knows exactly how terrible it looks, he doesn’t need Buzzfeed’s rankings to tell him that, thank you very much.

What’s not fair is that Jack’s beard actually looks great, dark and thick. He looks like a big Canadian lumberjack, Kent thinks. All that’s missing is a flannel.

He texts Bitty before Game 4. The Rangers are nothing if not determined, and the pressure is on. If they win this tonight, they move on to the Conference Finals, and Kent would like very much to go back to Providence and be able to sleep for like, a million years before he has to play again.

Kent Parson: Does Jack have a flannel. like a red and black one.

Eric Bittle: Kenny, Jack’s from Canada. Of course he has a flannel.

Kent stares at the nickname for a second, swallows down the feeling he gets from Bitty calling him Kenny before he responds.

Kent Parson: Can you get him to wear it out while he still has the beard

Eric Bittle: only if you score a goal for me tonight?

Kent Parson: deal

***

Warmups go by quickly, if not easily. Kent’s going to have to add some yoga or pilates or something into his routine, because his hips take a little longer to loosen up before every game, and it’s extra noticeable this late in the game.

They skate onto the ice to cheers and jeers. It might not be their barn, but a playoff game is a playoff game, and the Falconers fans are there, raising their voices in a sea of blue and white.

They stand for the anthem, and Kent can feel Jack on one side of him, Rusty on the other, both tall and solid. The anthem lasts barely a minute, but Kent has a rippling awareness of every player around him, every metal blade and not-yet-sweaty jersey. All the guys, breathing in tandem before most skate to the bench, and it’s just the starters on ice.

The puck drops.

Kent’s awareness doesn’t stop with the anthem, because he’s skating like he’s never skated before, with speed and precision and fucking beautiful lines. He can feel every player on the ice, knows where the puck is at every moment like it’s burned in his brain.

The moments when he’s back at the bench are agony, until he makes his first goal, halfway through the First period.

Their defense is spinning hard, and Snowy stops every attempt the Rangers make until the period’s up, and then Kent is back on the ice again, taking another shift with Rusty speeding out behind him.

Second period.

Goal.

Third period.

Goal.

Kent barely registers the third goal going in, he’s skating so fast that he briefly has to fight to regain control of his edges. When he does, the ice is suddenly awash with hats, raining down from every corner of the stands.

Not their barn, but a playoff game is a playoff game, and a hattie is big news.

Jack crashes into him, taps their helmets together. The crowd roars their approval as the goal replays on the Jumbotron, and the ice crew sweeps out to collect the hats.

Kent can feel sweat trickling out from under his helmet, down his neck. It’s gross, but Kent doesn’t care. They skate back to the bench in unison, and Kent feels alive.

***

The press is on him like a crowd of vultures as soon as Kent gets there, barely containing their excitement.

“So Kent, you scored your first hat trick with the Providence Falconers.”

Kent nods. There wasn’t a question in there, so he’s waiting for a follow-up, but everyone’s looking at him expectantly, as though it was. Okay.

“Obviously, every goal is a team effort, and I wouldn’t have scored any of the goals I did without my teammates.”

It’s true, even though Kent knows it’s an unsatisfying answer. Two of the goals had been on Jack’s assist, puck sliding to right where Kent knew it would be.

“That has to feel good though, a hat trick in a playoff game.”

Kent smiles, lets some of his very real happiness seep through and make it real.

“Yeah,” Kent says. He can feel Jack’s eyes on him from across the locker room, warm and soft. “Yeah, it felt good.”

They don’t go out to celebrate or anything, not this late in the playoffs, but the next day Bitty sends Kent a picture of Jack, sitting at their kitchen table hunched over a slice of pie, wearing a flannel that’s just slightly too tight around the shoulders and chest.

Kent Parson: looks yummy

He pretends he’s talking about the pie.

Eric Bittle: ;)

***

Conference Finals

They’re fighting so hard for it. You can practically see his ribs at this point, and Kent is just trying to maintain weight as best he can. Bitty’s basically been taking care of Kit since Round 1, so Kent usually just gets home and goes right to bed, too exhausted to do anything other than pound a protein shake and a bowl of greens.

The Eastern Conference Finals are a blur, a haze of games in late May, as the weather in Providence finally inches towards summer.

They lose 3-4.  
Win 4-0.  
Win 3-2.  
Lose 1-3.  
Lose 1-4.

That one hurts. Jack gives the fiercest locker room pep talk Kent has ever heard, possibly the most emotion that half the team has ever heard him express, and they skate onto the ice for Game 6 with spirit.

They pull it off, 4-2, and the series is officially tied going into Game 7.

Kent knows that no matter what happens out there on the ice, they played a series to be proud of. He knows that there are 20,000 fans out there in the stands and that half of them are going to go home disappointed tonight, but he doesn’t want it to be his half. The Falcs score, once in the first period and twice in the second, and he thinks maybe they won’t be.

But Tampa scores too, once in the first, and then three, fast and furious one after another in the second. If Kent were watching this game from somewhere else, a sports bar or at home, he knows he would be on the edge of his seat, breathless and waiting. As it is, they’re down one going into the third period, and Kent knows they can make it up, can regain their lead.

But the minutes tick by with nothing, no goals, and they’re fighting just to hold their own. All of them are losing steam, even during the power play, and Kent knows where this is going to end, even if he’s going to go down fighting.

He’s going to go down fighting.

They can still make it, there are still 30 seconds left on the clock, 20, 15.

The buzzer goes off. The game is over.

They lost.

The Falcs are out of the playoffs.

Kent feels suspended in disbelief. He’s not even disappointed yet, he had been so sure that they were going to go all the way. He can see his disbelief reflected around the locker room, especially on the faces of some of the younger guys. The older ones keep it a little more hidden, but it’s there.

Disbelief, he thinks, as he peels off his Under Armour and makes for the showers. A little shock is there, as his body cools down from it’s post-game endorphin rush. But Kent has won the Cup before, has also come this close before. It’s a familiar feeling, if not a particularly welcome one.

Jack and the As get pulled for press, and give the expected soundbites about how proud they are and how hard everyone worked to make it this far, and they’ll make next year. They sound like they mean it too, not that it makes it any better.

The haze of loss covers all of them as the room clears out, trainers and reporters leaving until it’s just the guys in the room.

Right at this moment, Kent knows that they really should be proud of far they made it. Not all the way but pretty far, and considering Kent and Jack only made up a few weeks ago, only reinstated the No-Look One Timer for a just a few games in the scheme of things. he’s not even mad. Besides, he’s pretty confident that they actually will make it all the way next year, but he’s not crazy enough to say that right now, at this moment. He’ll save it for later.

None of the guys are in the mood for commiseration drinks, they just trickle out quietly one by one to waiting wives and girlfriends. Kent is about to follow, when Tater sweeps him up in a hug. Kent doesn’t protest, even though his hair is still wet from his shower, and is definitely getting a big wet splotch on Tater’s shirt.

“Good game,” Kent tells Tater in Russian, meaning it.

“Good game Parsley,” Tater says back, squeezing once before letting Kent go.

Jack is still in the showers, and Kent half turns in that direction before moving towards the door instead. He suspects that a certain Southern baker will be waiting for Jack, and the length of Jack’s showers are honestly anyone's guess.

Just as he suspected, Bitty is waiting just outside the locker room, almost exactly in the spot where, what feels like eons ago, Coach had clapped a hand on his back and told him and Jack to keep it up.

“Hey Bits.”

His voice comes out a little more husky than he would like.

“Hey Kent.”

He looks Kent seriously in the face.

“You played a great game out there”

It doesn’t piss Kent off, the way it might coming from anyone else outside the team right now. Bitty really means it, and that helps. it just wasn’t enough.

“Yeah.”

Exhaustion is starting to hit, and Kent knows from experience that he needs to get home before he crashes. Physically, and otherwise. Bitty’s waiting for Jack though and the reminder centers him long enough for another thought to force it’s way out.

“Can you tell Jack —”

“Tell Jack,” he pauses. He doesn’t know what to say. Bitty is looking up at him, sympathetic and sweet.

Everything he can say will be somewhat meaningless, he knows. Getting knocked out isn’t fun, but getting knocked out when you’re the captain is it’s own special circle of hell. Getting knocked out when you’re Jack, and also the captain —

“Tell Jack he should be proud. Of himself, and the team.”

It’s meaningless, but Jack will know what he means. Bitty does too, clearly, because he steps in to hug Kent too before letting him go.

Kent breathes in vanilla, and cinnamon, before he’s released, and he clings to the scent as he walks out, makes it to his car and through the drive home.

***

The morning after the Falcs get knocked out, Kent wakes up with a headache, aching legs, and a lump in his throat, that won’t go away no matter how many times he swallows, no matter how much tea he downs.

The day passes by in kind of a gray haze. He throws a sad lasagna to heat up in the oven, and eats it from the pan, not bothering with a plate. Not even Kit is there to distract him from his misery, she’s still with Bitty. And Jack.

He remembers what he used to tell Jack after their losses in the Q, when Jack would stew in his upset for hours, walking back over every missed connection, every sloppy play until Kent had to physically drag him to bed.

 _You aren’t the only player on the ice_ , he would say, when Jack refused to talk to anyone. _This team wins together and we lose together_ , when Jack spent too long in the showers after a game. _Come to bed_ , when Jack wanted to stay up watching tape for hours.

But it’s different for Kent, he thinks. It’s different because he wanted to prove himself, with the team. He thinks maybe he did prove himself to the team, but he hasn’t proven it to himself. Then again, Kent thought he had proven himself to the Aces plenty, and look where that got him. There are lots of things he never thought about before the trade, apparently.

Maybe it’s not different at all.

There’s always next year, he reminds himself. That’s what Jeff will tell him when he calls, his mom, his sister. That’s what Kent will tell the rookies when he sees them later, what he’ll repeat to the press in any off-season interviews. There’s always next year, but right now there’s today, and today hurts.

Kent mostly keeps it together during the day. He does a couple of loads of laundry that’s been building up for God knows how long, and makes a list of groceries for delivery to replenish his depleted fridge. It feels better to keep his hands busy, even if he couldn’t say for the life of him what food he actually bought, or if he managed to separate his whites.

He doesn’t look at his phone all day, doesn’t even think he plugged it in last night after the game and he doesn’t have the energy to go look for it right now.

Kent eats a dinner of more cold lasagna, forcing himself to bring the fork to his mouth more times than he would like. Food doesn’t really taste like anything, probably won’t for another week at least, but Kent has been here before too, and skipping meals is not the way to go.

The tears spill out shortly after sundown. Kent shakes with them, throbs with them, slumped against a corner of the couch. Every tear hurts, a dripping reminder of his failure. A reminder that no matter how much he loves hockey, no matter that he’s devoted his entire life to it, hockey hurts sometimes.

Just like every other kind of love.

Kent feels his eyes well up again, and dashes an angry hand over them, willing the tears to stay put.

It’s futile.

Kent cries for hours, quietly at times, harsh and jagged at others. He doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he wakes up later with tear-crusted cheeks, and a snot-soaked tissue in one hand.

***

Despite his tears the night before, their loss doesn’t fully sink in until the next day. There’s no practice to go to, no game to prepare for that night. Nothing at all to distract him from the ache that seems to have settled only slightly from his outburst the night before.

Kent knew that it would be too much to expect that he could win this year, after everything that happened, all the curveballs the universe had thrown him. But Christ, he had wanted it. It was a good team, they worked hard and well together. Just like every year he’s come this far, he let himself get too caught up in the hope they would go all the way. He shouldn’t have let himself get as invested as he did, and maybe it would hurt a little less now. But this was hockey, and it was Jack’s team and it was Kent. Not getting invested was never a choice.

Over the course of the day, the ache settles in and Kent lets himself think about the future.

Kent only has another year before his contract runs out, and he’ll be on the market again. Kent thinks he’d liked to stay in Providence if they give him the choice. He should probably talk to Linda about, see if she has any thoughts yet on what kind of contract he could get. He should probably do a lot of things.

Kent lets himself wallow for exactly one more hour, before getting it together. It’s not the first time he’s lost the Cup, and it won’t be the last, and the world will keep on turning. He checks his phone first, reading all the messages he’s been ignoring for the last few days. He has to go clean out his locker soon, and he has a meeting with the PR team to talk about what kind of charity stuff he’ll take on next year. All the usual.

There’s a couple messages from his mom and sister, a couple from Jeff. He’ll get back to them eventually.

Also.

Eric Bittle: are you sulking

Eric Bittle: don’t sulk

Eric Bittle: I’ll make you pie come over

Well, with an invitation like that, how can Kent say no?

***

The promise of fresh baked goods is enough to lure Kent over the very next day. When Kent shows up at their front door, Bitty opens it with a crazed expression on his face.

“Just look,” he says furiously, thrusting a basket of fruit in Kent’s face, “At what this guy at the farmer’s market tried to pass off as peaches.”

“Does that look like a Georgia peach to you?” he demands of Kent, who takes a half step back in surprise.

Kent has no idea what a Georgia peach might look like, or how it might be distinguished from a regular peach, and if he’s being completely honest, he is not entirely sure what the difference between a peach and nectarine is at all, and in fact, can’t remember the last time he ate either.

But he knows better than to say that at this moment, when Bitty is right there in the doorway, and looking very upset.

Jack is hovering behind Bitty’s body, which might honestly be trembling with rage. Kent makes eye contact with Jack, who makes some desperate slashing motions across his throat.

And honestly, Kent’s gotten pretty good at interpreting Jack’s nonverbal signals, and he can hazard a guess.

“No…err. No, not really.”

Bitty opens his mouth again, and Kent can recognize the signs of a rant about to go down. He looks back at Jack, who makes a desperate little keep going signal with his finger

“But Bitty, you don’t have to make peach pie. Weren’t you just saying you wanted to try that new recipe for strawberry rhubarb?”

Bitty’s face lights up.

“Strawberry rhubarb! Now there’s a nice flavor combination if I’ve ever had one. And we have such nice early strawberries too. And rhubarb is just in season…”

He wanders off towards the kitchen, muttering to himself about fruit, and Jack and Kent let out a collective sigh of relief.

Crisis averted.

Jack quirks an eyebrow at Kent.

“Strawberry rhubarb?” he asks, voice amused.

“I panicked, okay? It was the first pie that came to mind.”

Jack grins, slinging an arm over Kent’s shoulder and leading him into the house.

“Well then. Strawberry rhubarb it shall be.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think there are any specific warnings for this chapter, but if I missed something, let me know! 
> 
> Chapter title means "Why am I falling?", from Frank Ocean, of course.


	11. Join the Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summer shenanigans, plus Kent realizes something.

It starts off as the best summer Kent has ever had. 

It’s quieter then Kent is used to. Usually with the Aces, Kent would be throwing himself into training right around now, to distract himself from the fact that he didn’t have a girlfriend to take a trip with, a family vacation to go on. He’d probably spend some time helping the Little Aces with their summer camp. Maybe he’d spend a few weeks in Albany at his nana’s old place, to break up the summer a little, but maybe not. Spending time there usually just made him miss her, made him think about his family a little more than he liked, especially now that his mom and sister were both off doing their own thing, and usually couldn’t make it out for more than a few days. 

But in Providence, summer training is no longer his only focus. He still has training, of course but he also has near-weekly check-ins with Linda and Dave. It’s easy to feel like they haven’t gotten anywhere substantive, but in fact he knows they’ve both made enormous strides since that first apprehensive conversation. Linda has crafted a pretty meticulous media response for two eventualities - that he gets outed against his will, and that he doesn’t and decides to come out voluntarily. It makes him feel better, knowing she has plans in place, even if he hopes they don’t have to use either for quite some time, Dave has cards up his sleeve too, although he’s holding them a little tighter to his chest. They schedule an in-person meeting for the end of summer, before pre-season starts, and Kent tries to put it out of his mind as much as he can. 

He tries not to think about Cammy either, having officially given up contacting him as a dead end. Dave suggests getting a private investigator, but Kent isn’t ready for that step yet, isn’t ready to let another person into his nest of distrust, even with a massive NDA. 

Besides, Kent has people now, plural - Jack and Bitty, and he doesn’t have to distract himself the way he did before. Bitty is in Providence for the summer, picking up shifts at a local bakery. Bitty doesn’t say it, but Kent thinks they’re going to make him a manager before long, and Kent is so proud. 

On days that he’s not working, the three of them take long, meandering drives, on scenic back roads and down the coast. On one memorable Tuesday, they take a long drive up to Maine, stopping to get what Jack promises are the best lobster rolls in the world. It’s a tough sell, but the food is definitely very good, made all the better by the ocean view and the company. 

Happy, Kent thinks, as they sit by the lighthouse. He can’t believe how effortless their friendship has become, how seamlessly he fits. Bitty is so welcoming and kind, and sometimes when Kent teases Jack, trying to provoke that tiny little smile, Kent catches Bitty looking at two of them with fond adoration. 

“Come on boys," Bitty says, as he hustles them back into the car. “I want to make it home before dark, and we have to stop at that bakery I saw on the way home." 

Bitty always calls them his boys lately, teasing and affectionate. It started one time when both Jack and Kent had stopped by Bitty’s bakery to pick him up at the end of the shift. Bitty’s boss, a tall, dusky-skinned woman with bright teasing eyes and a purple hijab, had laughed and called out to Bitty in the back —

“Bitty, your boys are here!” and Bitty had popped his head out, flushing when he saw them both tripping over each other in the brightly lit shop. 

Since then it’s been a running joke between the three of them, because even though two of them play professional hockey, and one of them is a 5 foot 6 professional baker, they all know who’s really in charge, and it’s not Kent or Jack. 

Somehow, Jack coerces Kent into running with him one time, and before Kent can stop it, it becomes part of their routine. Jack always knows the best spots, places where they can run uninterrupted for 10 or 15 miles down a sandy beach. It’s been a long time since Kent has run this much just for kicks, but Jack eases them into it with practiced care. 

Kent hates it, but it’s also kind of nice, the way his mind shuts off around mile 5 or 6, and the extra cardio definitely isn’t going to hurt when they get back to the ice, endurance is always a good thing. 

Bitty laughs at them when they come trooping back into the kitchen, sweaty and exhausted, and makes them stretch and drink plenty of water before he’ll pour them both tall glasses of his mama’s sweet tea recipe. Kent is delighted to discover that Bitty also enjoys a nice blue gatorade over ice, and is always happy to pour him one, despite Jack’s wrinkled nose and obvious disgust. 

Kent is absolutely convinced, it’s the superior way to drink gatorade, and everybody should try it for themselves. 

The Falconers have a barbecue for the 4th of July at a big house they rent on a lake. That’s one nice thing about living in New England, Kent thinks. Plenty of lakes, and so much green everywhere you go. July in Las Vegas had always felt like an exercise in masochism, which is exactly why no one ever stayed there all summer except for him. He got lots of rink time in though. That was nice. 

It’s definitely something to get used to, because the guys here don’t leave en masse as soon as the season ends, desperate to escape Las Vegas before the brutal summer heat. Instead, lots of them stay in the area, dipping in and out of the city for barbecues and get togethers all summer long. 

Kent rolls up early to the barbecue with Jack and Bitty, sitting shotgun in Jack’s big black truck while Bitty rides in the middle back, a protective hand splayed over an assortment of pies. Bitty is known to the team mostly as “the baker”, and he seems to take it upon himself to prove that he’s worthy of the title. Kent doesn’t think any of them know that Jack and Bitty are actually dating, apart from him and Tater obviously, they all just accept that he’s Jack’s friend from Samwell, and cheer when they spot the enormous spread of pastries laid out in the kitchen. Kent had asked Jack about it once, on a run so that he didn’t have to look Jack right in the eyes. Jack had shrugged, said they would come out to the team eventually. He didn’t seem all too concerned about it, so Kent wasn’t either, although his heart had ached a little, to see how different this Jack was from the boy he’d been. 

Today, Bitty has really outdone himself with strawberry, blueberry, and key lime pies. Kent thinks he even spots a couple of cheesecakes sitting in the fridge and his mouth is watering at the thought. You can take the boy out of New York, but good cheesecake is hard to find, and he stands by that. 

Kent lets himself relax as the party gets started. He grabs a glass of lemonade, plays a couple of rounds of pong. They’re playing with water because there are so many kids milling around, so he doesn’t even have to pretend to drink, which is nice

Kent wins his third round with a flourish, crowing as he spins in a victory lap. 

He catches Jack’s eye from across the room, and is reminded vividly of another party where he played pong with Jack’s friends at Samwell, and had got beaten by that girl, what was her name. 

Jack raises his cup in acknowledgment over the crowd and Kent flushes. With victory, of course. 

Kent turns down the clamoring for another round, is on his way to the kitchen to get another glass of lemonade. 

He practically runs head first into Rusty on the way there. His winger is standing in a corner of the kitchen, picking at a fruit cup and looking awkward. Maybe lurking is a better word. 

“Hey man, long time no see,” Rusty says with an easy smile. He fishes out a piece of pineapple and pops it in his mouth, follows it up with a grape. 

It has been, at most, like three weeks. Kent definitely saw him at locker clean out, and Snowy’s playoff party, where the Tampa Bay Lightning had crushed the Blues, but he grins in greeting anyway. Rusty is still one of his favorites on the team, a sweet kid and a great hockey player to boot. 

Rusty has started to grow out his hair into a pretty sick flow, although the playoffs beard is thankfully gone. Kent and Rusty had shared an opinion on that one. 

“So hiding in the kitchen, eh?”

Kent might not usually ask, not if he got the feeling that Rusty really was hiding away int he kitchen, waiting to go home. Some people just don’t like parties. Kent gets that. But Rusty seems pretty relaxed as he talks to Kent, like he’s having a good time even, by himself and far away from the action. 

“I’m not crazy about parties. I mean, sometimes I like them once I get there. But usually it’s just a lot of people. My therapist says it’s okay to be conflicted, so usually I come, and then just kinda take a breather when I need to.” 

“You have a therapist?” Kent asks, before realizing that might be a rude thing to ask, but Rusty just shrugs, puts the mangled fruit cup down, and reaches for a cookie. 

“Yeah dude. It’s the only way my mom would let me join the league, if I agreed to start seeing a therapist. I was mad at the time, but she was definitely right in retrospect. Just one of those mom things, I guess.”

Kent wonders briefly what that must’ve been like, what he would have been like if someone had forced him to have somebody to talk to before he signed a professional sports contract at the tender age of eighteen. Not well probably. He probably would have resented the fuck out of it. But then again, when he thinks about the drinking, the blacking out. Everything that he wasn’t proud of from his rookie year. Maybe it would have been okay actually. 

Yeah, that makes sense actually. He just never really thought about normal guys like Rusty going to therapy or whatever. 

Kent realizes he still hasn’t responded only when Rusty breaks in to his chain of thought.

“Hey man, you okay? You kinda tensed up there.”

Kent forces a laugh and a nod. 

“Yeah, just like, good for you.” It comes out a little stiff, so he tries again. “That sounds like it’s going well for you.” 

There, that probably sounds like something Jeff would say, or maybe Bitty. Clearly he’s crushing it.

Rusty nods thoughtfully, launches into an explanation of some of the other things his therapist says are okay, and Jesus Christ. Kent should go back outside, except he’s having a hard time getting his legs to pay attention to him, so he just keeps standing there, eyes locked on to Rusty’s red flow. 

Jack wanders up from out of nowhere, squeezes Kent’s upper arm. Kent takes it to probably mean, “You’re tense as fuck, are you okay?”

They’re good at the non-verbals like that. 

If he’s being honest, Kent never noticed Jack being this touchy before. Probably because before Jack was an anxiety ridden teenager hiding a drug problem and a gay relationship from a bunch of homophobic teammates and Kent was the dumbass enabling him. Kent doesn’t mind though, he likes how reassuring Jack’s touches are. Constantly letting him know that he’s there, right on the edge of Kent’s consciousness. It’s like there connection on the ice, but now it’s translated into real life. 

“Sorry to interrupt fellas, but Bitty asked me to come grab Kent for something. You don’t mind, right Rusty?” 

Rusty shakes his head, lifts his cookie in salute, and goes back to just chilling in the corner of the kitchen, bopping his head to the beat of some song only he can hear. 

Jack murmurs in Kent’s ear, “Sorry to steal you away like that, but you looked like you were freaking out a little. You okay?” 

His hand is still gripped on Kent’s upper arm, and Kent flexes into it a little. Jack lets go, and Kent immediately wishes he hadn’t. 

“Can we go somewhere quiet?” he manages. 

“Yeah Kenny,” Jack says, voice gentle. “Let’s go upstairs." 

The upstairs is quiet and empty, mostly just bedrooms and bathrooms. They can still hear the occasional shriek of laughter from outside, drifting in from open windows. Jack leads them to a ensuite bathroom and locks the bedroom door, and then the bathroom door too for good measure. 

Kent wonders if that’s something Jack learned from having panic attacks, and then he’s thinking about the last time the two of them were in a bathroom like this, and then he’s hyperventilating just a little, just for a minute. 

Jack’s voice is above him. Why is Jack above him? 

Kent realizes he’s sitting on the floor, head between his knees. Huh. 

“Kenny, can I touch your knee?”

Kent nods, or at least shakes his body in his best approximation of one, and then Jack is tapping out a rhythm with three fingers on his knee, just like Kent used to do for Jack when they were younger. 

The tapping lets Kent concentrate, gives him something to match his breathing to. When he gets his breathing slowed to the point where Kent no longer feels like he’s at risk of violently throwing up, he raises his head up, opens his eyes. 

Jack is sitting on the floor now too, sitting cross legged, leaning back against the opposite wall. Jack is pretty tall, so their knees bump in the middle of the floor.

The bathroom is painted blue, and is ocean themed, with little glass jars of like seashells and sea glass and stuff. Kent’s mom has a bathroom just like it, and thinking about that bathroom, the one at his mom’s house helps bring Kent back a little to right now. 

Jack doesn’t say anything, just looks at Kent with those blue eyes, keeps tapping slowly on Kent’s knee. 

“I’m sorry,” Kent manages to rasp out. “I didn't mean to take you away from the party.”

He didn’t mean for Jack to have to come deal with this. He doesn’t even know what this is, except that it doesn’t feel very good, and that it happened really fast. 

“Don’t apologize,” Jack says, calm and steady. It’s an order. “You’re my friend Kenny, I want to be here for you.”

They sit in silence for another few minutes. Jack keeps tapping, even though Kent’s breathing is almost normal now, and Kent angles his body into the touch, even as he leans his head back until it thins against the wall. 

Eventually, Kent clears his throat, finds his voice to speak again. 

“Rusty was talking about therapy,” Kent whispers. “When you came up to us.”

“Rusty was talking about therapy,” Jack repeats. It’s a question, but sounds like a statement. 

“About how much going has helped him, and I just kind of…panicked,” Kent finishes quietly. 

“That Rusty has a therapist?”

“Yes. No. He seems so normal.”

“And I don’t?” 

Kent opens his eyes in a panic. He doesn’t even remember closing them. Fuck, he somehow forgot that Jack was in therapy too, probably had been for years. 

“Fuck Zimms that’s not what I meant, you’re normal —”

There’s a wry smile on Jack’s face. 

“I know”, he says simply. 

Kent forces himself to work through the rest of the thought. 

“He just sounded so open about it, so calm. And for a second I wondered what it would be like. To have a therapist.”

Jack is looking at him, considering. His reply is slow, thoughtful. 

“I think it’s probably a good thing Rusty has a therapist. We forget sometimes because the kid is so good on our line, but he’s only 19. He’s not even old enough to drink. We all act like it’s completely normal to sign our lives away at 18, because that’s what the league tells us it’s normal, but not everyone is ready for that responsibility.”

He gives a harsh little laugh. “I know I wasn’t.”

Now it’s Kent reaching out to squeeze Jack’s knee. He’s not sure if he’s trying to comfort Jack or himself. 

“I think maybe I wasn’t either,” he hears himself admitting. 

The acknowledgement would knock him to the floor, if he wasn’t already sitting on the floor. He knows he wasn’t okay his rookie year. That’s why Jeff had taken him under his wing as much as he had, why he eventually stopped drinking, even if it took him a long time to figure that one out. 

Kent closes his eyes again. “Fuck.”

They sit in silence again for a minute, then Jack volunteers, “My therapist is actually pretty great.”

“Yeah?” Kent asks. He’s really asking something else, but Jack gets it anyway. They’re good like that. 

Jack is considering. “No matter who you are or what you’re dealing with, it’s always good to have someone to talk to without worrying you’re overburdening them. Because that’s literally their job. I think for me, because I’ve literally spent my whole life in a hockey rink, starting with my dad, it’s really important for me to have someone outside that world.” 

Kent gets that. He does. He doesn’t really have anyone like that though, outside the hockey world, unless Bitty counts. 

“What about your friends?” Kent asks. “All the guys from your team at Samwell? and Bitty?”

Jack tilts his head. “Friends are great, and a wonderful resource, but they have to deal with their own stuff too. And I think if you’re really looking for some perspective, friends aren’t always the best choice, because they’re inherently in your life. If it’s something you’re worrying about, it might be time to consider it.”

Kent lets his head drop to back between his knees, and then straightens back up. 

“Fuck. I don’t know. I thought it all was going pretty well, considering. Like, the trade and everything,”

“It doesn’t have to be going badly to consider it,” Jack reminds him. And then — 

“Do you think that maybe some of what you’re feeling has to do with what you talked to Bitty about? The stuff going on with the Aces?”

Kent considers it. 

“I guess maybe. I hadn’t thought about it for a little while, because we were in the middle of playoffs and everything. But then I started thinking about my contract being up this week, so I guess it’s kinda been on my mind." 

If Kent had any doubts before, the look on Jack’s face tells him that yes, Kent is an idiot and that his anxiety right now is stemming at least partially from that. 

Kent laughs softly, wetly. At least he can always count on Jack to be honest. 

“First of all, the Falcs are guaranteed offering you a contract to stay. Marty’s probably going to retire at the end of the season, so they’ll have the cap space and everything." 

Jack speaks with the confidence of someone who knows exactly what conversations are happening in the front office, even if he’s not privy to them himself. It’s not the first time in this conversation that Kent’s been reminded that Jack is literally a hockey legacy, probably grew up hearing about Bad Bob’s contract negotiations. 

Well, that’s good. Kent guesses he really has to have that conversation with Linda soon. 

“Second of all, you don’t have to figure it all out yourself. I know I still don’t know the whole story, but from what you and Bitty have said, it sounds really serious. And it’s not just about you either. You can ask other people for help, Kenny. Maybe a therapist would be a good start”. 

Kent sighs. Jack might be a hockey legacy, but Kent is just a hard knocks kid from the sticks that learned to rely on himself and only himself as soon as he could. 

“It just feels like cheating somehow." 

“If Bitty were here, he would tell you how unbelievably stupid that is. Since he’s downstairs, it’s going to have to be me." 

Kent manages to snort at that. It’s true, Bitty would say that, and make it sound sweet at the same time. 

Jack is looking at him with those blazing blue eyes. 

“I’m so glad that you and Bitty are close. The two people I love most in the world. I’m so proud of us, for being able to get here together." 

Kent knows that obviously it’s different, the love Jack feels for Bitty, and the love Jack feels for him, but it still makes him happy. He’s honestly proud of them too, because if you had told him a year ago that they would be here, not just on the same team, but friends, actually friends, he would have laughed in your face. 

“I like Bitty a lot,” Kent manages. “He’s a really nice guy." He means it. 

Jack nods in agreement, and then goes in for the kill. 

“Bitty would agree, you know. There’s nothing abnormal about going to therapy. If you think that’s something you want to do." 

Kent hmms and picks at the cuticles on his thumb. 

“Kenny, you know how my dad helped me think about it? If you got hurt in a hockey game, what would you do?”

“Hurt how bad?” Kent has to ask, because he’s definitely skated through his share of injuries, a sprain or two, or ten. Broken fingers. Bruised ribs, in that one playoffs series. 

Jack considers for a minute. “Bad enough that you can keep playing the game, but afterwards it hurts really bad."

“I guess I’d go straight to the trainer afterwards, see if it needs treatment or whatever”. 

“Exactly, because you want your career to be as long as possible right?” 

Kent nods. 

“So why is it any different when it’s your mind instead of your body?” 

And…Kent honestly doesn’t know. 

“You need it all to work together, Kenny. Mind, body, spirit. So let’s get you a therapist, yeah?” 

“Okay,” Kent manages. His breath speeds up again a little, but it’s okay. He’s okay. 

“Do you think it’s bad,” Kent asks after a while of sitting there, getting his breathing back to normal yet again, “That we need a hockey analogy for anything to make sense in real life?” 

Jack’s laugh is warm and deep, and after a minute, Kent joins in, letting it chase away the last of his panic. 

Jack reaches out and laces their fingers together, resting their interlocked hands where their knees bump together. 

“I don’t know Kenny. Maybe.”

***

When they go back downstairs, the sky outside is changing from dusk to night, a fading sunset already turning to darkness. Fireflies are starting to gather in the long grass on the edge of the lawn and a couple of the guys with wives and kids are starting to talk about making the drive home after the fireworks. 

They stand on the edge of the patio and Kent falls back into easy conversation with Thirdy and Marty, Jack’s arm thrown over his shoulder. No one asks where they went, and Kent listens to their heated debate about the greatest goalie of all time with amusement. 

Jack is in the midst of a passionate defense of Jacques Plante when their conversation gets interrupted by a commotion from within the French doors.

It’s Bitty, who walks out carefully holding a birthday cake with lit candles towards their little group. Everyone that’s outside starts to sing Happy Birthday, and by the end of the song, the whole team is gathered around Kent, and cheering loudly. 

Jack starts another round in French, because he’s a dick, and some of the guys join in. They reach the end just as fireworks start to go off across the lake. Everyone assembled runs to watch the show from the dock, assorted hockey players, kids, wives and girlfriends all streaming out across the lawn. 

Soon it’s just him, and Jack, and Bitty, still holding the lit cake, standing on the porch. 

“Happy Birthday Kenny,” whispers Jack, voice perfectly audible even under the bangs of fireworks echoing over the lake. “Make a wish.”

So Kent does, blowing out candles that are reflected perfectly in Bitty’s big brown eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings: 
> 
> Warning for “normal” centric language around therapy. Basically, Kent doesn’t realize that therapy is for everyone, and his realization that it can be isn’t phrased very inclusively. 
> 
> Description of a panic attack (Kent’s) and mention of Jack’s overdose. 
> 
> Continued threats of non-consensual outing, and so, so many shoulder squeezes.


	12. Double Trouble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kent goes back to Vegas.

Kent Skypes Jeff again the day after the barbecue. Jeff had called the day before to wish Kent a Happy Birthday, but Kent hadn’t managed to stay on the phone for more than 30 seconds before he had a dangerous horde of small children pulling him towards the lake. So he Skypes Jeff back the next day, relaxing into his sofa with some baseball game muted on the TV. 

Kent has plans to meet up with Jack and Bitty later for dinner, maybe go down the Riverwalk, get some food. Jack had made promises of a family-owned seafood place, and Kent would absolutely crush a plate of fish and chips right now, but he wants to catch up with Jeff first. If he plays his cards right, maybe he can convince Jeff to come out to the coast later in the summer, just hang out or whatever. 

Kent is strategizing the best way to present this idea, when Jeff picks up. Jeff looks stressed, which Kent has come to recognize as the new norm. It sucked when the Aces got knocked out from even making the playoffs, but it should have meant that Jeff had plenty of time to rest by now. The guy should have regained regained his season weight by now, should be reveling in the summer, tan and healthy and eating the kind of food that would have made the team nutritionist scream. That’s the version of Jeff he’s used to seeing in the summer. 

Instead, he just looks the same as he has every time Kent has seen him in the last few months, worn and tired and drawn, like he’s fitting too much of something into a too-small body. And Kent still doesn’t know how to help. He doesn’t know how to help and it’s killing him. It’s killing him that he can’t be there for his best friend, the guy who basically saved his life, if he really thinks about it, gave him a reason to keep playing hockey when he thought that none existed. 

The Aces haven’t named a new captain yet, and Jeff has the A, so it makes sense that they would be putting more pressure on him, but if they’re being honest here, the stuff that’s stressing Jeff out doesn’t have anything to do with the game at all. It might have something to do with Kent himself though and listens with a frown as Jeff tells him a story about a team night out at a club. Team nights out are pretty standard for the Aces, especially considering their locale, but this one had taken an interesting turn. 

Jeff tells Kent about getting a call at midnight from Chris, telling them all to leave, get out immediately. The guys had all booked it for cabs home, assuming that some kind of drug bust or something was about to go down, and the media would eviscerate them if their faces were papped. The Aces had a certain reputation already, and PR didn’t need any more headaches on their hands. All the guys had checked the news the next morning, but there was nothing, no arrests or busts or anything out of the ordinary. Jeff even went and checked the police blotter, and couldn’t find a thing. 

The story stirs a memory in Kent, one that he hasn’t thought about in years. Something kinda similar happened his first year as captain, and he had hustled the guys out of there in record time, terrified that they would take the captaincy away from him if he couldn’t keep them in check. He leaves that detail out as he tells Jeff the story, not that Jeff would laugh or anything.   
They kept the story on the low, not even talking about in the locker room, although now that he’s thinking about it, Kent can’t remember if they ever found out what the call was really about. He definitely thought it was pretty strange at the time, but it must have gotten pushed aside in the grand scheme of things. 

Now that he’s actually playing for another team, he knows that the Aces did in fact keep a much tighter rein on their players, at least in comparison to the Falcs. Kent had never realized that it might be strange because he had never played anywhere else, never even been sent down to the minors for a game or two. Until this season, he just always assumed that it was the norm for every team to keep tabs on their players like that. 

This all passes through his mind, but it’s not going to help Jeff, who’s still sitting there on the other end of their Skype call, looking worried and pensive and frustrated. 

Kent says what he can, resolves to ask Jack if he’s ever dealt with anything like that here. He could even reach out to some of his former teammates, the guys who have gotten traded over the years, see what they have to say. He’d have to be crazy discreet though, so maybe he’d better not.

Jeff waves him off the rest of Kent’s questions yet again. He can be surprisingly stubborn for someone who’s usually so laid back, and Kent knows that he’s not going to get anywhere further with him tonight. 

Jeff deftly deflects Kent’s probe about coming out to Providence, and turns it back around on Kent. 

“When are you coming out here?”

Kent grimaces a little, not bothering to hide his expression. He’s been putting off dealing with the rest of his shit until after the season ended, but it’s not like he had that excuse anymore. The original plan had been to fly out before his birthday, but the weeks had come and gone, and he was still in Providence. Going back to Vegas meant lining up his media face, getting some vague platitudes ready for when he was inevitably papped. It wasn’t like that here, and Kent had been enjoying his freedom — the ability to just go to some random restaurant with his friends and order fried fish and not have it be a story the next day.

Yeah. All that shit is not something he misses about Vegas. 

***

For better or for worse, Kent has a call scheduled with Linda and Dave for the very next day. 

He expects it to be more of the same, a regular check in, with both of them telling him to keep his head down and his ear to the ground. It is, until it isn’t. They move through the usual pleasantries quickly, thank god, before getting down to business. 

Linda has previously walked them through potential media strategies, this time it’s Dave sharing his research. 

As he walks them through what they’re potentially looking at, Kent follows the conversation as best he can but quickly starts to feel overwhelmed. Kent can tell that Dave is trying to keep the legal jargon on the low, but some of the words he’s using still go over Kent’s head, and it’s a struggle to stay focused. 

He paces a little around the kitchen and living room, before settling against the kitchen counter, where he leans, trying to center totally on Dave’s voice. 

“There are a few past instances where trades have been investigated internally by the NHL, but such investigations are usually kept very quiet and have almost always come out in the team’s favor. They don’t want to fan the flames any more than necessary, I can tell you that no player has been dissatisfied enough to take it outside the league and file a case in court.” 

“I don’t have to tell you this Kent, but we’re on unprecedented grounds here. If there’s the real possibility that you were discriminated against because of your sexuality, we have a very serious civil rights case to consider, in addition to alleged abuse of the trade system. However, if the NHL does their own investigation and finds differently, we’d have a hell of a time proving anything in court, especially given the current legal precedents in Nevada.” 

“These investigations take time, but you should be aware of the very real possibility of being barred from play for the remainder of your current contract, should this situation become public, which obviously would not be ideal.” 

Kent swallows hard. That’s literally the last thing in the world he wants. He got to play the best hockey of his goddamn life out there with the Falcs, he can’t fathom being forced to give it up, without even the excuse of an injury. 

“How we proceed is mostly up to you Kent,” Dave says, voice serious. “We can request a formal investigation, and hope that something gets turned up in the process, but the process of internal investigation is murky and messy. It could also damage your reputation, especially if nothing turns up.” 

“With your current contract expiring so soon, this probably isn’t the best course of action, unless you’re willing to put it all on the line.”

Kent shakes his head, already breaking in to interrupt. 

“I don’t want to do that.” 

The last thing he needs right now is another bombshell thrown at his reputation. The press only just stopped asking about the trade, about playing with Jack again. If they add this in on top of it — he’s so tired of being the most infamous player in the league. 

“I assumed as much,” Dave says drily. “In that case, we are much better off waiting until your next contract is signed and in the books. You’ll have played enough seasons to merit a no-trade clause, and especially if you keep playing the way you played last season, they’ll be tripping over themselves to give you one.” 

Kent briefly wonders how much of this conversation Dave and Linda had with each other before bringing it to him. Their interests are closely aligned after all, all three of them. Not for the first time, Kent sends a silent thank you to Bad Bob, for making sure he had the best of the best back in the day. He owes a lot to Bad Bob. 

“That sounds — doable,” Kent says. It does. He can wait another year, wait for the dust to settle. This is his career, and he can play the long game if it means he gets to keep playing hockey. 

“That’s it then!” Linda says brightly, speaking for the first time in a while. Kent has no doubts that she’s been furiously scribbling notes the whole time. “Kent, keep your head down, maybe do some more charity stuff in case we have to go with Plan B. Let us know if you hear anything else that we should be aware of.” 

She says it like it’s all settled, like everything’s taken care of, and maybe it is. There certainly isn’t anything else he can do at the moment, not without stirring the pot. 

For whatever reason, Kent doesn’t mention going back to Vegas, although maybe he should. He’s feeling antsy, the longer they stay on the line, and he doesn’t need more well-intentioned warnings telling him to watch out. 

They hang up instead, and Kent sits there for a minute, tapping his fingers against the countertop where he’s been leaning. 

On some level, he knows it’s ridiculous, to dread facing a city like this. It’s not the city he really has a problem with after all, and he had years of good memories there before everything changed. But every time he tries to picture his first time on the ice there, or nights out with the team, or hiking in the canyon, his mind lands on that last taxi ride to the airport instead, confused and worried and a little scared. 

He’ll have to go back eventually, when the Falcs play the Aces on their turf, he might as well do it now, when the press aren’t in his face. 

For some reason, his own brain sure takes a whole lot of convincing. 

***

It takes some more gentle nudging on Jeff’s part, but Kent finally flies back to Vegas, just for a few days, to finally deal with sorting out his car and apartment. He’s put it off for long enough, and he’s rested from playoffs so he can’t milk that excuse for any longer. He tells himself that the trip will be short, and he tells Jack and Bitty that too, when they ask. 

He’s sitting at their wooden breakfast table yet again, flight details pulled up on the computer in front of him. There aren’t any flights available direct from Providence, and he’s just about to slam the computer shut in frustration, when Jack offers to just drop him off in Boston, rather than Kent have to make a layover in Chicago. 

He’s standing a few feet away, leaning on the island counter and fiddling with a stray roll of hockey tape. Kent doesn’t even question why they have hockey tape in the kitchen, Jack and Bitty’s house is just like that sometimes. 

Bitty’s in the pantry, muttering darkly over bags of cake flour, while Jack has kept up a running commentary on Kent’s flight options, smirking every time Kent rules something out. 

Kent immediately protests. It’s not like it’s that far, but Jack’s definitely got to have a better way to spend his time than carting his dumb, procrastinating butt to the airport. 

“That it isn’t necessary, Jack, I don’t mind doing the layover if I have to —”

Jack just cuts him off, “You hate layovers Kenny, come on. Now do I have to buy the ticket myself?”

So Kent buys the ticket. 

***

The drive to Boston Logan isn’t bad at all. It’s pretty close, and for once, Kent is going to be early for a flight, thanks to Jack’s obsessive attention to detail. Kent is usually the last minute, tell the gate he’s coming kinda guy, so it’s a welcome change. Jack doesn’t even complain when Kent insists on blasting a little Britney for the first part of the drive. He does smile when Kent switches to some Dad tunes, playlist carefully perfected to switch at the exact moment Jack is about to lose his mind. 

He’s suave like that. Do people still say that? Whatever, Kent does. 

Kent climbs out of the car, grabs his backpack. The black pickup truck that Kent now knows Jack bought because of Bitty (“You can take the boy out of the South, but you can’t take the South out of the boy”), is covered in a light layer of dust from the hiking trip they took last weekend. Kent rubs a heart on the side absentmindedly, then rubs it out again, feeling a little silly. 

Jack is climbing out of the driver’s seat, despite the cars behind them, while Kent fiddles with his backpack straps, feeling like a little kid again, and then Jack is right there, wrapping Kent up in a tight hug. 

Kent is almost getting used to it, this hugging business. Bitty had given Kent one too that morning when he went to drop Kit off. Well, Kit, a small (practically tiny) climbing tree, and basically a month’s worth of food and her favorite treats, because well. Just in case. Kent is relieved that Bitty had agreed to cat sit again, at least she’ll have someone she knows around while he’s gone. Maybe he ought to see about getting her a friend when he gets home, because the thought of her being lonely while he’s away on roadies has been increasingly gnawing at him. Kent might have adjusted to his move (eventually), but Kit hadn’t really, only settling down once Kent was around full time again for the summer. 

But the hugs are weirder coming from Jack than from Bitty. Kent still has all these memories of Jack being like, the least tactile person ever, and it’s hard to reconcile with New Jack, who’s always reaching out and finding little ways to touch Kent — brushes of skin, rubbing little thumb circles on Kent’s leg. Kent actually had to take some deep breaths at that one, but Bitty was right there and he wasn’t — It wasn’t like that. 

Kent hugs Jack back this time, breathing in the familiar scent of his cologne, before he lets go. Jack holds on for just a second longer, and then takes a step back himself, coming into contact with the truck, and probably getting dust on his otherwise immaculate polo. 

“Text me when you get there, okay?”

“Sure, Zimms,” Kent says easily, tugging his backpack straps tighter. 

Kent smirks a little, because part of him still doesn’t know how to deal with this version of Jack, that hugs him so easily, and wants to know when his flight lands, and smirking has always been a safe response for things he doesn’t understand. 

Something in Jack’s eyes flickers. “I’m serious, I need to know when you get there safe.” 

Jack’s expression is serious enough that Kent can feel the smirk sliding off his face in response. 

“Okay. Yeah,” he agrees. He would have anyway, so it’s not like it’s a big deal or anything. Checking in after flights is normal. 

A car honks from behind them, and Kent startles a little. Jack is still parked in the drop-off lane, and a taxi driver is gesturing at Jack to move so he can pull up.

“I better go. Safe flight Kent.” 

Kent manages a weird little jerky half nod, which seems to satisfy Jack because he hurries back around to the driver’s seat and climbs in, giving Kent a wave before merging out of the drop-offs lane and driving away. 

***

The trip goes by quickly, especially with no layover. Jack was actually right about that one, Kent does hate layovers, especially when they can be avoided. More time in the airport just means more time for people to come and ask for autographs and selfies, and usually he doesn’t mind that kind of thing, but he hates it when he’s traveling. Planes bring out the worst in him. 

Without a layover, it’s really only five hours from Boston Logan to McCarran, not nearly enough time for Kent to psych himself up to go back to Vegas, but enough time for him to drink two Coca-Colas and a coffee, so at least he’s vibrating with caffeine and sugar as he rolls through the arrivals gate and out to taxi stand. 

It’s definitely kind of weird going back to his old apartment. Realistically, Kent knows that it’s only been a few months, it feels like longer. It feels cliche to even think about it, but Kent doesn’t feel like he’s the same person that had frantically thrown stuff into a bag the night of the trade, and it’s a weird feeling. 

His apartment feels different also, especially with no Kit running to greet him at the door. Kent makes a mental note to text Bitty and see how Kit is doing, and then remembers that he had promised to text Jack when his flight had landed. 

Kent pulls his phone out to text them, thumbing out quick messages to both before tossing his phone on the kitchen counter. 

Kent just stands there for a minute, looking around. He’s had a cleaning service come by, so the place isn’t completely musty, but it still has a weird vibe. The open concept that had seemed so grown-up to him when he first got the place is still nice, but the view that had been a main selling point when Kent was a teenager, now feels like too much. The lights from the strip are bright, even from this distance, and Kent can’t shake the feeling that there are people out there, watching him. Kent remembers missing this view, from his apartment in Providence those first few weeks and he laughs quietly to himself. So much has changed. 

He draws the drapes back, so he doesn’t have to look at the lights anymore. Some of his furniture is still here, the stuff that had been too much of a hassle to ship, and looking around, he starts to mentally categorize what he wants to keep, what he wants to donate. Maybe he should have bookmarked more than a few days to be here, but it just seemed like so much of a hassle, and he didn’t want to be away from home for that long. 

Kent doesn’t want to think about what that means. 

Kent sighs, and picks his phone up from where he had dropped it on the counter. Bitty and Jack have both texted back already, even though it’s getting late in Providence. Kent loves the picture of Kit that Bitty has sent, she’s curled up in a sunny spot on the windowsill, looking out into the garden. He saves it to his camera roll with a smile, he might have to post that one on Instagram later. 

Zimms: Thanks for letting me know. Have fun. 

Honestly, he’s such a dad. He should be asleep by now, but Kent would bet all the money in his wallet that Jack stayed up specifically for Kent’s text, and if that’s not a dad move, Kent doesn’t know what is. Admittedly, Kent doesn’t have the best frame of reference for that kind of thing, seeing as how his own dad would definitely not have cared whether he arrived safely or not, but still. It feels like a dad move. 

Kent hadn’t fully admitted it to himself until the plane was somewhere over the Midwest, but as much as he didn’t want to leave home and come to Vegas, he probably does need a few days distance from Jack and Bitty. They’ve been so close, impossibly close, all summer long. There probably hasn’t been a single day that’s gone by, especially since his birthday, that he hasn’t seen one or both of them. Kent likes how he fits into their lives, filling in the gaps when the other is busy. How easy it feels, to hang out with them, to chirp them, talk to them. It doesn’t feel like he’s overstepping, because they always want to hang out with him too. Bitty constantly invites him over, to sample pie flavors before shoving him down to the basement to watch tape with Jack, and Jack himself has fulfilled his promise of being there for Kent a thousand times over. They go on runs and go to restaurants and just hang out, and Kent can barely remember his life before this was a thing. 

But sometimes. Sometimes he’ll get a glimpse of Bitty’s eyes, usually so brown but hazel in the right light, or Jack’s smile, the secret one, when he thinks no one else is looking, and his heart aches because he doesn’t have that. He can’t. Even the way Bitty and Jack interact with each other, tender and warm, with love underlining ever interaction, even the fights, makes him want, desperately. 

It’s just — he doesn’t know what he wants, exactly. 

Jack, who Kent had been desperately in love with, once upon a time. Jack, who had broken Kent’s heart. Bitty, who helped heal Jack. Who helped heal Jack and Kent, when they had to play together again. Bitty, who Kent would do anything to protect. Jack and Bitty, together, who push and pull, but fit together so perfectly they feel like fate. 

Objectively, Kent knows that Jack and Bitty are in a relationship and he is not. He does. But it’s so intense sometimes, to feel all the feelings, and know that he doesn’t have a chance, not with things the way they are. 

And even knowing that, he wouldn’t change things for the world. 

And right now especially, it’s all just a little too much to think about, so he doesn’t. Kent texts Jeff instead. 

Kent Parson: honey I’m homeeeee

Kent Parson: wanna go out 

Kent Parson: i’m bored 

Kent Parson: jeffffffff

Jeff Troy: Don’t get your panties in a bunch Parson 

Jeff Troy: yeah ok 

Jeff Troy: pick me up in 30?

Kent Parson: bet 

***

Kent wants to get Wanda out of the garage where he’s been storing her, but they can’t get her out with such short notice, so he has to Uber instead. He’ll get her tomorrow. 

The drive to Jeff’s place is short, which used to be his favorite thing about living in this part of town. Now it’s just a reminder of the distance between them, because the drive might be short, but the flight was long. 

Jeff’s girlfriend Jillian is there when the Uber drops him off, and her dog. Kent plays with the dog a little while he waits for Jeff to finish getting ready. Kent likes Jillian. She’s petite and blond, like all of Jeff’s girlfriends have been, but she has smile lines at the corners of her eyes that she doesn’t try to hide, and is always telling funny stories about her job as a kindergarten teacher. She’s chill, is Kent’s point, and loads better than the string of irritating puck bunnies that had flung themselves at Swoops previously. 

“You’re not coming out with us?” 

She’s dressed in sweatpants and a baggy tee, so he assumes the answer is no, but it never hurts to ask. Kent learned that one early on. 

“I get enough of him as it is. Have fun boys.” 

Her laugh is a real one, timed so that it rings out just as Jeff enters the living room and Jillian’s dog runs to meet him, tail wagging. Kent goes to hug Jeff, practically doing the human equivalent of a tail wag, he’s so excited to see the guy. 

Jeff just grins, and accepts the hug with easy grace, before dropping a kiss on Jillian’s cheek and ushering Kent out the door. 

“The night awaits, mi amor,” he says, with a cheeky grin. 

They Uber to a place on the edge of the Strip that Kent has always liked. It’s lively enough for Kent and Jeff to slip in unnoticed, but not so crazy that it’s overwhelming, especially for Kent, who has to face the whole place sober. There’s a dance floor here that’s bouncing with energy, people flinging their bodies fueled by alcohol and hormones and probably other substances too. 

It doesn’t take long before a brightly dressed cocktail waitress appears and leads them to a private section. Usually, being a hockey player in a desert town wouldn’t exactly guarantee them the VIP treatment, but the Aces are known at this place, and Kent was once something of a hometown hero. Former hometown hero. He could put that in his LinkedIn, if he had one. 

Kent and Jeff settle in at a velvet banquette, in a dark corner that’s far enough away from the action to feel private, but still close enough that Kent can feel the thrum of energy, the bass pulsing through the floor. A different cocktail waitress comes around to get hem drinks and Jeff orders before Kent has a chance. 

“Bud for me, thanks. Just some lemonade for him, if you have it.” 

The waitress promises to find some, and Kent shoots Jeff a questioning look as the waitress sashays away. 

“What, all this time around you and you think I don’t know your drink of choice Parsley?”

Kent instinctively groans a little at the nickname, but accepts the drink with a smile when it comes. Hanging out with Jeff is easy, and they relax, just laughing, chirping each other while they wait for some of the other Aces to show up. The guys who were in town had all been eager to see Kent, and one by one they trickle in, until there’s a loud group of guys, talking over each other, pounding Kent on the back, ordering shots and discussing their prospects with the groups of girls around the club. 

It’s good to see them, even more so when he doesn’t have to face them on the ice, but it does make Kent remember exactly why he didn’t go out with these guys all that much when he was on the team. Sooner or later, someone’s going to try and get him to pull, and it’s just going to be awkward for everyone involved. 

It’s just gotten to that point in the night now, and Kent can see Danny open his mouth, knows he’s about to make a joke about it. Kent waylays him by opening his own mouth instead. 

“What do you say we get out there boys?” he asks, cocking his head towards the dance floor, where the music has picked up both in tempo and energy. Most of the boys give a cheer of assent, and clamber to their feet, any sort of athletic grace far outweighed by the sheer volume of alcohol they have rapidly consumed. 

Jeff stays put, deeply engrossed in conversation with Pickle, and gesticulating with his bud in one hand. 

“You coming?” Kent asks, half turned towards the dance floor already. 

“No dancing for this old guy,” Jeff says, eyes crinkling in laughter. Jeff doesn’t dance as a general rule, and Kent can never resist making fun of him for it. Tonight though, he just snorts, puts his drink down, and lets himself be shepherded by the team out to the dance floor. 

He dances. 

When he looks up, it’s because he feels eyes on him, watching him from across the room. It takes a minute of scanning, but soon Kent spots the owner of the eyes in question, a tall dark-haired man standing on the edge of the floor, moving in time with the beat. The man’s gaze is appreciative, Kent can tell that much, even in the dark light, and Kent preens for a minute under the attention, lets his hips shake slow and sensual, lets his shoulders arch back for a just a minute. A burst of rowdy laughter from being him quickly brings him back to his senses, and Kent shakes his head a little at the guy, who has slowly started to move closer. The guy sinks back into the crowd, and Kent sinks back into the music, moving up and down and side to side. 

It’s always nice to be appreciated, but Kent’s happy just to dance, grinding with the bass, probably a dumb grin fixed on his face. Never let it be said that Kent V. Parson isn’t a good dancer. Besides, they don’t really have this in Providence, clubs where people can move with such reckless abandon. Where people stop being self-conscious and just let themselves go, pulled in by the party. Kent wonders if he’ll ever stop comparing the two places — maybe if he ever gets traded again — but the thought gets pushed out of his mind as the DJ changes the song, lets the beat play out to screams and shouts. 

A few songs later, Kent makes his way back to their section, sweaty but happy, and ready for a break. 

“I’m going to take a leak,” he leans over, whisper shouts to Jeff. He isn’t sure he’s even been heard, but Jeff nods, eyes still locked on the dance floor where two guys from the Aces are predictably making fools of themselves, falling all over each other and a pair of blond girls in precariously high heels. 

Kent makes his way down the back to a set of bathrooms he knows to be a little quieter than the main ones. In Vegas it’s not unusual for people to come out of bathrooms sniffing conspicuously, and Kent keeps an eye out, in case he has to make a quick exit. 

This bathroom is mercifully empty, and under-lit, with gaudy gold sconces making the whole thing look like a fucking brothel. Vegas decor is not exactly tasteful or understated most of the time. Kent sighs in relief at the urinal, washes his hands, and is reaching for a paper towel when the door swings open, and another guy enters. 

Kent gives the guy a nod without looking up. 

He looks up a second later, as he balls the paper towel up and lobs it at the trash can, and immediately stiffens a little in surprise. It’s the guy from the dance floor, the one that had been watching him. 

The guy makes no move to head for a urinal, just stands there, in front of the door, watching him. 

“You Kent Parson?” 

He nods, hackles instantly up. He thought this guy had been flirting earlier, but he curses himself for letting his guard down enough to even acknowledge him. As far as he knows this is just a zealous fan but — 

It’s not like he was going to do anything before, not here with all the Aces here, and not with this cloud of paranoia hanging around him.Just the act of getting recognized means his fight or flight instincts are kicking in, and he doesn’t get anywhere on the ice by fighting. He starts to inch towards the door. 

“You need to be careful.” Kent freezes. He doesn’t think that anyone is a fan of being told to be careful in club bathrooms but surely — 

“What do you mean?”

“I’m a journalist, and —“ 

Kent swears, starts pushing past him. It’s bad enough when he gets recognized at the airport or in front of his apartment. Getting cornered in the bathroom by a journalist, in the middle of the fucking off-season really takes the cake. 

“Kent, wait.” 

It’s not Mr. Parson, and the familiarity of it throws him off for a split-second. He’s close to the door, fingers already reaching for the door handle, but he pauses, half turning back towards the man who’s still standing uncomfortably close. 

He can smell the other man’s sweat at such close quarters

“Just,” he makes a small sound of frustration. He can probably sense that Kent is about to split, get the fuck out of there. “Something’s coming. And it’s not going to be good.”

The door swings open again, and Kent jumps backwards to avoid getting hit. A burst of laughter and noise follows as someone else enters, shoots them a curious glance, and keeps walking, swinging towards to the stalls with the abandon of someone very drunk. 

The man looks wary now, just as wary as Kent probably, and drops his voice. 

“I wish I could tell you more.”

For whatever reason, Kent believes him. 

Then, in a sudden burst of energy, their positions are reversed, and it’s the other man pushing past him, reaching for the door handle, and disappearing down the dimly-lit hall. 

Kent is left alone, breathing hard, the smell of sweat and cologne lingering in the air. 

***

Kent instinctively glances left and right before hurrying back down the thankfully still-empty hallway. Jeff is now alone at their sitting alone at their booth, abandoned by Pickle and engrossed in something on his phone. He doesn’t look up as Kent approaches, but does when Kent just stands there for a second, trying to heave in a deep breath. 

Kent’s unease most be reflected on his face, because Jeff drops the phone immediately into his lap, eyes never leaving Kent’s. 

“What’s up?”

Kent sits down slowly, pushes away the drink that is now sweating on the table in front of him. 

“Something weird just happened.”

The music changes as he says it, turning to something they can talk over without screaming. 

“What do you mean?” Jeff says slowly. Kent has to take in another deep breath, remember that in the world that is Vegas clubs, weird can mean a lot of things. 

“Some guy just came up to me in the bathroom, told me to watch my back?”

It comes out like a question, even though it isn’t meant to be. Kent briefly describes the rest of the encounter, what little of it there had been, and breaks off when he’s done to gulp down the rest of his lemonade. 

Jeff’s tone is questioning in response. 

“Like a threat?”

Kent considers. He hadn’t been comfortable from the minute the guy walked in, but he didn’t feel threatened, exactly. 

“No, more like…a warning.” 

“Weird,” Jeff says. His tone is light, but his face is serious. “Do you think —”

Jeff breaks off at the sight of several Aces making their way back from the edge of the dance floor, now accompanied by a couple of girls. 

Kent shakes his head in warning, but Jeff has already stopped talking and reached for his drink again. 

He sticks it out for as long as he can, firmly in the “not having fun” category now. The itchy, restless feeling is back, and he keeps scanning the room for glimpses of the guy again, even though he knows it’s futile. After another hour, Kent gives up and announces his departure to the guys still there, gives out a round of fist bumps and waves, promising to catch up with them later, and mostly meaning it. He missed his guys, but Jesus, he remembers having more fun with them on nights out like this. Maybe he used to be more fun too.

His apartment feels claustrophobic with the drapes closed, but he doesn’t want to open them, and have to see the lights of the city, even in the distance. It feels too vulnerable. 

He picks a blue gatorade out of the fridge absentmindedly, moves into his bedroom, puts it down on a coaster. There’s not any chance of him being hungover, but the desert heat is still dehydrating when you’re not used to it, and Kent doesn’t fancy waking up with a headache tomorrow. 

He sits on the bed. Him and Jeff made plans to meet up for brunch tomorrow, so at least they’ll be able to take there, but he still feels restless, despite the hour, despite his jet lag. 

Too restless to sleep. 

Kent knows he was supposed to get some distance from them, leave Jack and Bitty to do their own thing. But that doesn’t stop him from wanting to reach out anyway. He wants Bitty to give him advice, Jack to tell him everything’s going to be okay. 

It only takes another few minutes of sitting there, listlessly sipping gatorade, before he gives into his impulse, cursing himself quietly. 

He texts Jack, expecting him and Bitty to be fast asleep and that he’ll see it in the morning, but Jack calls him right back, voice muzzy with sleep but there. There, just like Jack promised. 

“Is everything okay?”

Kent can hear rustling, imagines Jack standing up in the dark, slipping out of the bedroom he shares with Bitty, so as not to wake him. 

“Yeah. It’s probably nothing.” 

Kent explains the interaction in the bathroom as best he can, trying to stay coherent. 

He can feel his breath speeding up again, but he fights to keep his voice steady on the line as he finishes the story, tries to control the nausea that rushes up through his body. 

All spring, all spring he’s felt like this paranoid son of a bitch, waiting for this vague and immense thing that no one can name. A tsunami, sweeping through the ocean, about to crash into the shore, only you don’t know why and you don’t know when. Now it’s the day before landfall, and the wind is starting to pick up and Kent doesn’t have a shelter to go to, and he’s scared. 

Jack is patient on the other end, a ballast in the storm.

“You might not want to hear this, but maybe it’s time to have a meeting with management, see what they say. They’re pretty great, especially George, and I’m sure they would have your back.” 

Kent doesn’t say anything. 

Jack sighs. “Just think about it. And come home as soon as you can.” 

“I have to finish this stuff first,” Kent hesitates a little. He doesn’t have a return ticket yet, and it would be a pain to have to come back here to finish dealing with his stuff, but he wants to be home. 

“Soon,” he promises, and lets Jack persuade him back into bed. 

***

Kent doesn’t sleep well. The whole night it was like his body was caught in a dream state, somewhere halfway between asleep and awake. He imagined having conversations all night, with Jeff, with Jack, with the guy from the bathroom, all playing out in the theater of his mind. They were startling vivid, every one of them, and none of them ended the way he would like. 

At some point just before dawn, Kent gives up and just gets out of bed. He’d like to say his sleeplessness was thanks to jet lag, but the low prickle of anxiety that’s covered his body since he landed at McCarran definitely isn’t helping. Last night’s encounter is still seared fresh in his mind, not settled at all from his poor night of sleep. 

It’s still hours before he’s meant to meet Jeff for brunch, and Kent is already restless. Weeks of running with Jack has been habit-forming so Kent laces up his sneakers like it’s second nature, slipping out of the building and on to the pavement. The sun isn’t quite up yet, but that’s definitely a good thing. In the height of summer like this, this is practically the only way he could run anyway and Kent relishes the last of the cool desert air before the cement starts to burn underfoot. 

The sun is up by the time Kent turns to head back. If he were running with Jack, this would be the point where both of them would stop talking, just sinking into the feeling of feet hitting the ground, one stride after another. Jack would egg him on, leading Kent on another loop, another round. But he’s not running with Jack, and so Kent breaks into a sprint instead, lungs burning in a way he has come to relish. 

His gait lengthens in the last mile, he’s so eager to get home and shower. He doesn’t miss much about his Vegas apartment, but the shower is definitely one of them. It’s blissful, when he gets there as is the gatorade he downs during it. Shower gatorades are also underrated. 

This apartment also has a big, full length mirror in the walk-in closet, and Kent looks at his reflection for a minute, not vain but appraising. He flexes a little. He’s put on most of the weight he lost during playoffs back on, but there’s still a few pounds left to go, and it’s always the last few that are the hardest. He thinks he could probably put on another 5 pounds before pre-season, maybe 10 if he’s super disciplined, but there’s only so many different ways to eat that many calories a day, and he tries to let himself off the hook a little more during the off season. 

Kent gets teased a lot about being one of the smaller guys in the league, but the truth is, it’s taken a lot of work to find the balance that lets him keep his speed without being so small that checking would be dangerous. He’s not at that balance yet. Whatever. He’ll eat a lot at brunch. 

Kent checks the time as he wanders from closet back to bedroom, and decides it’s finally an acceptable hour to text Jeff and not get chirped for it. 

Kent Parson: Sweet Sue’s at 10? 

Jeff Troy: You’re already dressed aren’t you 

Jeff Troy: You horrible little man 

Jeff Troy: yeah ok 

***

This time, Kent has time to actually go over to the garage and pick up Wanda. She’s been well taken care of, and hums to life when he starts her up. Fuck, but he’s missed her. He decides on the spot that he is going to get her shipped out east after all, winters be damned. 

Kent is still early, so he takes the long route to the diner, driving through sleepy suburbs and into the desert. Wanda might not be an all-season car the way Cosmo is, but he can picture her driving down the coast with Jack and Bitty, singing horrible pop music with Bitty and Jack pretending he can’t hear how off key they are. 

Sweet Sue’s has always been has favorite breakfast spot, far out enough from the city that he can relax. It reminds him of the place Tater had taken him to that one time, and he find’s himself telling Jeff about it is they get seated, and the waitress brings over water in those red diner Coca-Cola cups. 

Jeff just looks at him as he’s telling the story. And like, yeah, it doesn’t sound as funny now that Kent is actually saying it out loud, but he swears he had laughed for like the five minute when the waitress brought Tater his third plate of potatoes, still popping her gum with disinterest. Jeff doesn’t even give him a courtesy laugh, just smirks at him across the table. 

“What?” Kent says, somewhat defensively.

“You’re really happy there, aren’t you?”

The question is sincere, so Kent bites back his initial joke of a response and considers the question honestly. It’s true. He thought he had been happy with the Aces, would have easily resigned another contract with them if they had offered one. But instead they traded him, and he had changed so much as a result. 

“Yeah, I am. It’s weird, because Vegas was supposed to be everything I ever wanted right? Like first pick, captain, face of the franchise, and all that? But I just feel like I get to breathe more in Providence. Like, I can just play hockey, and that’s enough for right now.”

“I’m glad.” 

Jeff seems to sense that Kent doesn’t want to talk about it too much, and instead brings up the rumors they’ve both heard about the Habs coach potentially retiring. Hockey players love to gossip, after all, and they chit chat while waiting for their food. 

Kent is just about to flag the waitress down and ask for a refill of sweet tea (it’s not as good as Bitty’s, but it will do), when his phone starts to blow up, lighting up and buzzing with notifications. 

After a few seconds, Jeff’s does as well. They look at each other in confusion, before reaching for their phones in unison. Kent’s first thought s that he’s been traded again, and the panic floods his mind as he hazily unlocks his phone and tries to focus on the words in front of him.

The first text Kent sees is from Linda. 

Linda: Call me 

The second set of notifications is from Twitter, where it looks like he’s been tagged in a post over a hundred times and counting, mentions blowing up by the minute. 

Breaking: Owner, General Manager of NHL’s Las Vegas Aces Charged In Surveillance Ring 

Kent stares at his phone before reaching out to grip the table with one hand, all thoughts of sweet tea abandoned. 

“Jeff,” he croaks, not looking up. 

“Yeah,” Jeff says, sounding a little croaky himself. “I see it. Go to the car, I’ll settle up here.” Jeff gestures expansively around the diner, looking somewhat panicked, but much, much calmer than Kent, who is basically holding on to the table for dear life right now. 

Kent mutters something that might pass for a yes, and books it, keeping his head down, hat pulled over his eyes as he scoots out of there. It’s only another minute before he’s sitting in Wanda, and calling Linda with shaking hands, forcibly reminded of the last time he was in Vegas. 

Maybe this city is just cursed for him or something. The opposite of lucky. 

She picks up on the first ring, just like last time. 

“I only saw the headline,” he says, right off the bat. “Is it true?” 

A pause, then — 

“Yeah, Kent. No one knows anything more than what the article says. We’re all trying to find out more —” 

“Looks like they’ve been watching them for quite some time, but we just don’t have more information than that right now. 

“Do you think…it’s a scandal right? The Falcs are probably going to want to distance themselves, right?” Kent hates the way his voice comes out small, but he’s just found his footing again. When he thought earlier that he had been traded again — 

Kent can see Jeff through the windshield, making his way over, a tall to-go cup in his hand. 

“Kent, the Falconers aren’t going to drop you over this. We don’t even know what this is, but for starters they clearly have a lot more sense than some people.” The certainty in her voice calms him, enough that he can unclench a fist he didn’t realize he’d been holding. 

“Kent here’s what we’re going to do. Every franchise in the league is scrambling right now to find out what’s going on. I’m going to talk to the Falcs, get a sense of what their response is going to be, and start drafting some potential statements for what we can see. You, go home, stay out of sight, and we’ll schedule a call with Dave. Sound good?”

Kent mumbles out an affirmative. 

“Do you have somebody that you’re with right now?”

“Yeah, I’m with, uh, Swoops. Uh, Jeff. Troy.” Jeff has made it to the car, and Kent reaches out blindly with one hand, trying to unlock the door without looking. 

“I know Troy,” she says, a note of amusement breaking into her serious voice. “Why don’t you guys go home, get a drink or something, and avoid the news as much as you can. I’ll be in touch.”

Kent finally manages to unlock the doors as he hangs up, hands a little steadier but not much. 

“You didn’t drive?” 

Jeff is slinging himself in to the low passenger seat, frame just a little bit too tall to fit comfortably. 

Jeff shakes his head. “Ubered. Figured maybe we’d go somewhere afterwards.”

“Have you read it?” 

Another shake. 

They both reach for their phones again. 

***  
Fuck, this is so much bigger than Kent even realized.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh-oh. 
> 
> In other news: I was going to split this chapter up, but decided to just throw it all out there. Thanks to everyone still reading!

**Author's Note:**

> Well friends, buckle up, because this doc is 40k+ and growing. Warnings for each chapter will be in the endnotes, the rating right now is "Mature" for descriptions of panic attacks, etc., but it might go up. 
> 
> unbetaed
> 
> Thank you as always to Ngozi for creating such a beautiful, vivid world. <3


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